Reviewed by Mel S-W
I was over the moon when I received I’m Not Scared: A Big Hedgehog and Little Hedgehog Adventure by Britta Teckentrup through the post. The book arrived swiftly and was so securely packaged. The book arrived in very good condition in cardboard packaging which could be recycled. The packaging was designed so that it meant that the corners of the book survived the drop through the letterbox and didn’t get bent.
The book is published through Prestel Publishing who are publishers in the fields of art, photography, architecture, design and lifestyle. You can tell this by the quality of the artwork, the look and feel of this book, that it was published by the right company. The pages of the book were of excellent quality. They were so thick and sturdy even when my four year old helped with turning the pages. The illustrations, although darker than most of the books we read, are beautiful and remind me of some of the books that I used to have in my childhood from the 80’s. The illustrations are so lovely that I got distracted by them, seeing different details every time I read the book, often seeing butterflies where I didn’t think they were even any on the page.
The storyline in I’m Not Scared: A Big Hedgehog and Little Hedgehog Adventure was so delightful but also very clever. It follows the journey of Big Hedgehog and Little Hedgehog and how both of them deal with fear. From Little Hedgehog waking up and fearing that Big Hedgehog had left, fear of the dark and noises in the forest. It gives children (and adults) coping techniques to help them with their fear like positive encouragement, taking things at your own pace, whistling and counting. This book also points out that it’s ok to talk about your fear, that it’s not a sign of weakness but of strength and even tells us that adults can admit to their children that they are scared too.
The only downside I have found with the book, is the amount of text on some of the pages – there are a couple of pages nearly full of text – which was a big chunk of text in one go, but the positives far outweigh this…. I loved the fact that the hedgehogs didn’t have a gender given to them so that they could be relatable to all family situation’s. As a mother of a child who has two mummies this helped us to bring the story to life as we could talk about the characters as if we were us or other family members depending on who they wanted to be. It was just a beautiful story that even without reading the blurb on the back of the book about the themes, I was just very impressed.
My four year old sat so contently and listened whilst I read the book for the first time. He loved being able to talk to me about times that he has been scared too. It’s a book that will be read regularly to help with our son’s fear of the dark so that he can truly believe that it when he says “I’m not scared.”
Rating: 5 out of 5 – it’s such a lovely beautiful story with a lot of coping mechanisms that children can use in a language that they understand.
RRP: 10.99.
For stockists visit prestel.com