Haffertee Hamster ¦ Haffertee Goes Exploring ¦ Haffertee Goes to School ¦ Haffertee's First Christmas ¦ Haffertee's First Easter ¦ Haffertee's New House

These six Haffertee books have been reissued in bright new covers with a free bookmark inside each book. They look very attractive and the stories, about a little girl with the eccentric name of Diamond Yo and her toy hamster, are pitched straight at the six to seven-year-old newly fluent reader. At this level they are very successful. Little girls, particularly, liked them. They are simply written and domestic, arranged in short chapters and well dotted with line drawings.

For my taste, however, there is a great problem. This is that they are heavily religious in content. The entire purpose of the books is to put over to children the teachings of Christianity. Woven into each book, with varying degrees of unnaturalness, are little homelies on prayer, God, friends, the Crucifixion and so on. There is something too contrived and sermonising and earnest about it all. Taking an incident in which the garage gets untidy and then having a character say 'It reminds me of what happened in the Temple at Jerusalem' seems too near the 'Life, you know, is like a tin of sardines' school of religion for me to take it seriously.

However these books were well liked by some children because they are so easy to read and if the message they offer is one that you would want your children to hear then these will be ideal for infant assemblies and Sunday schools as well as for children to read for themselves.