by Jayden Leggett, Assistant Editor
It’s not just for kids… OK, it’s pretty much entirely for kids. But it’s GOOD for the kiddies!
The Excellent Adventures of Max and Madison is an imaginative collection of stories grounded in reality but containing imaginative elements children will love such as talking animals, and living statues, cars and cuckoo clock bids. The stories were written by “Grandma Bette”, an Australian resident living just outside of Melbourne, and were intended as bedtime reads for her grandchildren.
Each story is only three to four pages in length, making it an ideal size for kids to easily digest without becoming bored or struggling to focus on what is happening, and also meaning that parents don’t have to spend hours reading their children a bedtime story!
The book contains thirty-five short stories, and each story is accompanied with a photograph which serves as the illustration that details the highlights or central themes of the story. These child-friendly photographs are bright and cheerful, and as a photographer I felt they were a very nice touch in making the book more enjoyable for kids to read. Having said that, it should be noted that this is not a picture book, and the younger age group that it is aimed at means that it will need to be read to somebody by an adult.
Most of the stories contain fun and imaginative elements that the little ones should get a huge kick out of, as Max and Madison (the main title characters) interact and play with Australian native bush animals in a nearby national park, cows and other farm animals go for adventures to the beach and farmer’s markets, sparrows befriend a living fountain statue and so on. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the adventures that Max and Madison embark on involve them doing fun things with no mention of modern technologies like television or video games, which reminded me of the good ol’ fun days of my youth before I became corrupted by the addictiveness that is digital entertainment.
Another nice feature of the book is the inclusion of educational content. Before you start rolling your eyes at the thought of this being another excruciating exercise in “edutainment”, rest assured that the stories in this book are first and foremost about entertaining and exercising the imaginations of it’s child audience. The various lessons and teachings within the tales are included as casual elements within the story, often brief throwaway lines that serve as being informative and fun rather than being the basis of a boring graded school test. Through these stories kids will be taught about things such as how caterpillars undergo metamorphosis to become butterflies (thankfully the word “metamorphosis” is not used), what the word “nocturnal” means, the behaviors and eating habits of certain native Australian animals, what a tram is and so on. Fun and education rolled into one, just like Sesame Street used to be, before that show-pony Elmo stole the limelight.
There are a couple of minor gripes to be had with the book. First of all, some of the dialogue that Max and Madison use is a bit too “old” and unnatural. I mean, what sort of five-year-old today uses words like “meanwhile” and “certainly”? Another thing that constantly kept niggling at me as a professional writer (why are you laughing at that?) is that there are a lot of grammatical errors within the book. Sentences that last far too long when commas are used instead of periods, quotation marks that have either neglected to be used or were put in the wrong place and face the wrong way, accidental double-spaces between words and so on. There are a whole mess of grammatical mistakes that should have been picked up during a proof-read before going to print. However, while this may be mildly irritating to the adults who are reading this book who may happen to be perfectionists like myself, these flaws in grammar will not do anything to hamper the children’s enjoyment of the stories contained within this book. My apologies for being just another snooty critic!
All in all The Excellent Adventures of Max and Madison is a perfect resource for any parent wanting to exercise their child’s brain and imagination, and I thoroughly recommend it for parent’s looking for an alternative to sitting their child down in front of the idiot box or are sick of reading any of the lengthy Harry Potter books in the hopes that it will send their kids off to sleep. Also, keep an eye out for a pilot in one of the stories named Captain Kirk. Hilarious!
ComicsOnline gives The Excellent Adventures of Max and Madison 4 out of 5 cute and cuddly drowsy Koalas
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