Kinder Cottage Publishing is a publishing company that was started in 2012 by a couple in Florida. They saw a problem with big publishers abandoning American culture and heritage. To mend this, they started Kinder Cottage and published a series on Peter Rabbit and Wizard of Oz. Since then, they have expanded and are planning to add some great looking autobiographies in the near future.
We were sent hardback copies of Peter Rabbit at the Farm and When Peter Rabbit went to School. Each of these stories is an updated adaptation of the works that were written in the 1920's. The illustrations are the same, but wording has been updated to today's vocabulary. Kinder Cottage did these updates is a way that preserves the original stories. These books are written with 3 to 9 year olds in mind, but would easily be enjoyed by kids older than 9.
How We Used It:
I read these books to Josie and Gabe as bedtime stories.
Both kids love Peter Rabbit so these were an instant hit. They both sat quietly and paid attention, which is standard for Josie but special for Gabe. The stories were longer than I expected (about 60 pages) so it took us about a week to finish each one. When I'd get to a stopping point, I had two pouting kids asking for just a little more.
The wording is updated to more modern terms than the original 1900 versions, but still contained quite a bit of words my kids had never heard of. When they asked what something meant, I had them look at the pictures to see if they could figure it out. If they couldn't, we wrote it down and looked it up the next day. I loved that, while I intended for these to be just bedtime stories, we ended up learning some new vocabulary. Yea, we. I didn't know what a few meant myself!
In Peter Rabbit at the Farm, Peter decides to disobey and get into a bit of mischief. Of course, this is no surprise since that seems to be Peter's specialty. Peter meets all kinds of characters and ends up in trouble with Thomas The Cat. There is adventure, silliness, and a little bit of fear when Peter gets lost. The book does an excellent job of pulling kids in to the story.
When Peter Rabbit Went To School was fun for me to read since I always like to see how the kids react to stories about traditional schooling. Of course, a rabbit going to school isn't exactly traditional, but again they do an excellent job making the story fun for all kids. In this story, Peter and his rabbit siblings are sent to school after getting into a bit too much trouble. Mama Rabbit thinks this is the best option for the bunnies, but little does she know, the school yard holds it's own adventures for the bunnies!
These stories are all stand alone books, but there is an order that I would like to read them in. The first story tells the story of Peter Rabbit while the others tell of this adventures.
My Opinion:
These books were really well done. They held the kid's attention while also being fun to read. I liked how they updated the language to more modern terms without dumbing it down. Even though the words are more up to date, they still sparked quite a few great vocabulary lessons for the kids.
The pictures are clever. Even though there aren't a ton of them, the kids enjoyed looking at them while I read the longer sections of text. After reading the stories, I think that Josie (7) would be able to read them herself. Most pages only have a few sentences on them. There are a few pages with text from top to bottom, but with some encouragement I think she could handle them. Th books are a great size for little hands and the text isn't too small.
We all enjoyed these stories.
I think the price of $4 per book is extremely reasonable. These books are pretty enough to be displayed and I am sure our family will read them over and over.
Product Details:
www.KinderCottage.com
Peter Rabbit books: $4.00 each
* get 20% off by using the code "TOS" at checkout!
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