View source for Momo and Snap are not Friends by Airlie Anderson

{{infobox2
|title=Momo and Snap are not Friends
|author=Airlie Anderson
|reviewer=Zoe Morris
|genre=For Sharing
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=978-1846435980
|pages=32
|publisher=Child's Play (International)
|date=May 2013
|aznuk=1846435986
|aznus=1846435986
|cover=1846435986
|summary=Who needs words? Not these two!
}}
''La la la!''

''Tum ti tum!''

''Eek!''

''Ack!''

Y’know?

Meet Momo the monkey and Snap the crocodile. They are not friends. Don’t you go thinking they are buddies because they are not. No sir. In fact, anything one can do, the other can do better. One is good at being scary, but the other is great. One can do handstands but the other can do one-handed handstands (which, by the by, are my own signature move). As for who can run faster, well you’ll just have to wait and see, but they have a race to find out of course.

I know all these things not from reading this book, but from looking through it. Because this is a book without words, or no words beyond various onomatopoeic sounds, anyway. It’s an odd concept and I wasn’t sure how it would work but it does work. Splendidly. Without the distraction of silly words, you are free to concentrate on the story. Because there is a story beyond the above. A story that involves two show-offs realising that sometimes they need each other for more than to have someone to compete against. 

This is a toy as much as it is a book. It’s something to play with and great for building language skills in a creative way. For once, your children can tell ''you'' the story, tell ''you'' what’s going on from the simple pictures that make the ‘plot’ obvious. And it will grow with them from the stage of ''That one said 'Hup' and that one said 'Ha' '' to ''Momo was showing off how well he could juggle. He could juggle five bananas at once! But Snap wasn’t impressed because he could take bananas and balance them on his snout. He was clever''. It works well because it provides a framework for imagination, signposting a bit for those who aren’t yet totally at the stage of being able to make up their own stories from scratch. Bigger siblings can tell the story to smaller siblings, and it might be a different story each time, regardless of their reading level.

A great idea, you can read into it as much or as little as you want, but I’m not one to over-analyse. Simply put, it’s a sweet picture book, emphasis on the pictures, and there’s a fun, happy ending. A winner.

Thanks go to the publishers for sending us this book to review.

Once you've sorted your monkeys from your crocs, you might like to move on to [[The Beginner's Guide to Bears by Gillian Shields and Sebastien Braun]].  You might also enjoy [[Cat's Colours by Airlie Anderson]].

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