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Meerkat MailEmily Gravett
Meerkat Mail
by Emily Gravett
Sunny leaves his crowded meerkat family to find somewhere better, sending postcards home from each relative he tries, and learns what he was missing.
A story about animals and families, funny and warm in tone. We would put it with children of 4–7, and at a reading age of about 6 for reading alone.
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Our take on this book
Sunny the meerkat loves his family but finds their crowded, sandy life a bit much, so he sets off to stay with far-flung relatives — the rock-dwelling ones, the swamp ones, the desert ones — sending a postcard home from each before deciding, one visit at a time, that home was not so bad. Emily Gravett's picture book is a designed object as much as a story: the postcards are real flaps you lift, addressed and stamped and scribbled on the back, and the desert light in the illustrations is beautiful. The joke is that every relative's home has a serious drawback Sunny is too polite to mention, and the reader spots it before he does. There is nothing to worry a child here, just warmth and a gentle homesickness. For a four- to seven-year-old it is a lovely read-aloud with plenty to do on every page.
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Or let them write their own.
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