View source for My Friend Fred (the Plant) by Daniel Cleary and Kanako Usui

{{infobox2
|title=My Friend Fred (the Plant)
|author=Daniel Cleary and Kanako Usui
|reviewer=Margaret Young
|genre=For Sharing
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=978-1609052959
|pages=40
|publisher=Blue Apple Books
|date=April 2013
|aznuk=1609052951
|aznus=1609052951
|cover=1609052951
|website=
|video=
|summary=Can a plant really be your best friend? Find out in this fun new comic book style  offering from Balloon Toons.
}}
I loved comic books as a child. As an adult. I love them even more as wonderful way to encourage literacy in young children.  Unfortunately comic books for children are hard to come by now, and there are very few books in this format for children under age 8. Ballooon Toons seems poised to change this with a delightful new series of children's books printed in comic book style format, but with a sturdy hardback binding.

My Friend Fred (the Plant) is a fun story about a small cat whose best friend is a sunflower. The small cat has just moved to a new neighbourhood and is taking his plant for a walk - as you do. He soon meets another cat who finds the idea of having a plant for a friend weird. The initial exchange of words doesn't seem very friendly, and it would be easy to imagine a child in same situation feeling hurt, but  all that is needed is a little bit of understanding before both cats learn something new -and discover new friends. This is a fun short story which touches on several themes such as moving house and making friends. The illustrations are bright and cheery and the overall tone of the story very happy as well. There is plenty of humour, and just a little bit of a moral to this lovely well illustrated book.

I found this perfect as a read aloud story. Both my son and I enjoyed the book, and this is definitely a series I would like to see more of. It is a fun, short story in a  format I find ideally suited to encouraging children to read. I feel that the illustrations convey the story so well that a child could get a general grasp of the story even if they do struggle with many of the words. My one complaint with this book is that I feel the vocabulary is just a bit too advanced for a book that is billed as ''The perfect way to start off your new reader''. I would happily recommend this as a book for sharing, but I really could not recommend this to a brand new reader. Most books for children who are just starting to read either use  words which are very easy to sound out, or primarily use words from a high frequency word list, that the children in the target age group are likely to have already learned in school. This book does not follow either pattern. I feel that this book would best suit a child who is already developing some confidence in reading rather than a child just beginning to read. Other than this one issue, this is an excellent book.

If this book appeals then we can also recommend:

[[Friends by Michael Foreman]]

[[Little Grey Donkey by Nicole Snitselaar and Coralie Saudo]]

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[[Category:Daniel Cleary]]
[[Category:Kanako Usui]]