Boy vs Beast is a new series aimed at very early readers. If you think of Beast Quest’s little brother, you have the idea. The series currently has eight books with more in the pipe line. It is written to a strict criteria of sentence length, word frequency and word difficulty, so that new readers can read the book, and actually follow the story because all of their effort isn’t taken up with trying to understand lots of new words. This makes them excruciating to read as an adult, but they work a treat for their target market.
The ‘Boy’ is Kai who lives on Earth, separated by a border-wall from Beastium, which is where the ‘Beasts’ live. There are battles and adventures, and the action keeps coming. Maintaining the peace takes up a lot of Kai’s time, so it’s lucky he is a resourceful young chap, and a born leader.
There are black and white maps and illustrations of the various tools and gadgets used, and there is a lot of BANG, KAPPOW & ZAP etc.
Having heard the publisher talk about these books in terms of their aim to help a young child acquire a love of reading, particularly boys, I’ve become a fan of these. They are best read in order, although if you read the first one, the order would probably not be critical after that. As an introductory offer, the first book Aquatan is only $5 and the other seven are $10. Four more books will be published next year.
If you have a young boy, who has read all of the Zac Power books, or who has found the Beast Quest series a bit too difficult, Boy vs Beast is definately worth a try.
The publisher is also the creator of the EJ12 books, which I will talk about in another post. Previously she created the Zac Power and Go Girl books. She is passionate about getting children reading, and providing books that they will want to read. She is also very aware of age appropriate content, so parents, you can feel happy about the books. Her website is Lemonfizzmedia.com if you are interested in checking Susannah out. Heather
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