Book Review: Good Morning, Grumple ISBN 9781772780147

Written for ages 1-3, Good Morning, Grumple is a good book for parents wishing to encourage their child to wake up in the morning. The rhyming text is playful and engaging, like a song and dance routine that shuffles the little one out of bed and into the world. This picture book’s strongest point is the ability to encourage changes in behaviour without making the child feel wrong or bad.

The illustrations are in a multi-layered collage with appealing patterns and textures. However, the colours are very muted for a story encouraging a child to be excited about getting up to meet the sun and the wondrous sky. As drawn, the Grumple appears to be a fictitious animal, not the little fox the book jacket professes. How wonderful it would have been to have the lines and colouration of a fox family at work to support the story instead of chunky monochromatic greens, greys and yellows.

Writer Victoria Allenby lives in Toronto. Her debut picture book, Nat the Cat Can Sleep Like That, won the 2014 Preschool Reads Award.
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