Title: Blown Away
Author: Rob Biddulph
Illustrator: Rob Biddulph
Age Group: 1-6
Synopsis: Flying a kite has never had such dire consequences. Penguin Blue finds herself and her friends flying over oceans and into strange lands. How will she get home now?
The Low Down:
I bought this for someone else and then couldn’t handle how adorable it was and bought a copy for us too. I shouldn’t be trusted in book stores. My impulse-buying control goes straight out the window. It’s books like Blown Away that make me less willing to reign it in. The rhyming story is witty and the colors and pictures are phenomenal.
Often times when a picture book rhymes you end up with the same sort of rhymes on every, single page. It’s monotonous to read and honestly you’ll probably be reading it more than once. If your house is anything like ours, more than once is the equivalent of fifty. 
It’s times like those, that make me want to throw the “dog jumped high on the log” books out the window. Don’t get me wrong, the simple rhyming has its time and place and it’s extremely helpful in assisting and introducing young readers to cadence, basic rhymes, and beginning to read. I just have a great amount of respect for a book that can provide both a repetitively engaging story and a rhyme that speaks to young ones. Blown Away is one of those, with lines like: “A lesson learned, there’s no denying, this penguin wasn’t built for flying.” This book encourages cool thinking in stressful situations (being swept overseas by a kite definitely counts as stressful), cooperation, and problem solving.
The illustrations are bright and colorful. Sticking with mostly blues, whites, and greys while in the Arctic, really makes the red kite pop out on the page. The animals are adorable and drawn almost like caricatures, accentuating the unique shape of each creature. Bug loves the page with the ice cream
truck. When we got to that page and I told him the animals wanted to go home he looked at me with the most incredulous face a small person can possess. “Why would they want to go home if there’s an ice cream van here?” We’ll need to work on priorities but I so far ice cream is always on the top. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon but then again neither will Blown Away. A good combination to be sure.
Story Tips:
1. We blow the kite through each page and do an extra hard blow on the page where everyone goes home. Bug’s started to identify the wind now.
2. Fly a kite afterwords just make sure to hold on to your intrepid traveler!
I need more!
Rob Biddulph has two other books out now: Grrrrr! and Odd Dog Out. They both look fabulous and I’m looking forward to adding them to our reading list soon.
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UK Amazon:Blown Away
US Amazon:Blown Away
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