If You Were Me and Lived in….

This month we were given the opportunity to review a set of four books from Away We Go Media by Carole P Roman.  This set is from Roman’s If You Were Me and Live in....series.  We received the following books to review:

We also received an inflatable globe, which the kids thought was great, a passport for us to use as we “travel” through our books, and two pencils with country flags on them that my daughter thought was great and ran straight to the pencil sharpener with.

Since we are studying countries and cultures this year in our school, I thought this would be a very timely set of books to include on our reading. Recommended for ages Pre-K through age 8, this was perfect as our son is PreK this year and our daughter is 3rd grade and 8 years old. Though I would have likely purchased these books and then read them WHEN we got to the part of the year where we were studying that particular country, for the review period we read all four books. Both kids thoroughly enjoyed them.

The books are very colorful, easy to read, and chalk-full of information considering their size.  At approximately 30 pages per book, they are a piece of cake for my 8 year old to read and not to overwhelming to be of interest to my 4 year old.

Each book begins with a colorful picture of the country the book is about with a star marking the location of the capital of the particular country. Next, the book highlights the continent on which the country is located and allows the child to see where the country is located on the globe.  Once the geography is covered there are bright, friendly pictures of a boy and girl that are “from” that country telling the reader about what life is like in their country for them.  I thought this was a great perspective for the books and both of my children enjoyed this. Also, since I had a boy and a girl reading them, I liked that there was a boy and a girl from each country, dressed in appropriate clothing, discussing what it is like in their country.  Food, games, common names and popular foods and sports are covered in the books. Also, any notable landmarks or other things that a country is known for is covered. For instance, the Eiffle Tower is pictured and discussed in the France book and the Mayan Temple are covered in the Mexico book. The flags for each country are also depicted in most of the books.

During the review period, my daughter was preparing a presentation on her favorite country – France. She used the book as reference for her presentation and even took it to her co-op to show her friends. The book provided good information on the country to be used in a short presentation and lovely drawings of the culture and landmarks which she could easily show.

My daughter enjoyed reading the books to her younger siblings. Though I likely would not have thought to purchase the books for my 8 year old because the reading level is below her level, she enjoyed them just as much as my younger son. Overall, we liked the books due to their compact, easy to read format for getting an overview of the country.  This is an excellent book for my Pre-K son to use as his reference book as we study each country.

We will refer back to these books as we study each country this year.  Roman is noted on the website to have additional country books in the future. We look forward to possible reading them as well as we move through our study of the world.

If You Were Me and Live In…France, Spain and Mexico are available for purchase on Amazon in two formats: Kindle ($.99 each) and Paperback ($8.99 each). If You Were Me and Lived in…Norway is available in paperback for $10.79 and on Kindle for $1.99. Be sure to visit the Away We Go Media website for additional information on these great books.

You can read what the other TOS Crew members had to say about Away We Go Media here.