ReadItDaddy's First Book of the Week - Week Ending 17th July 2015 - "Little Kunoichi the Ninja Girl" by Sanae Ishida (Sasquatch Books)

Let us count the ways we love our first Book of the Week this week. "Little Kunoichi the Ninja Girl" by Sanae Ishida kicks off with a fabulous map of a mystical mysterious Ninja Island (YAY for ANY book that starts off with a map like that!). On this island lives a little girl, high up in a treehouse in a bamboo forest. She is no ordinary little girl. She is Little Kunoichi, the Ninja Girl.

Kunoichi doesn't go to a normal school. Kunoichi zips down a zip wire straight into Ninja School where lessons like maths and geography aren't the norm, instead Kunoichi and her pals learn the stealthy ways of the Ninja. Hurling throwing stars and whirling nunchucks, practicing their defensive karate and learning how to conceal themselves for surprise attacks.

Poor Kunoichi finds Ninja School quite tough, so she silently slips out for some extra practice (this part of the book made us hoot with laughter after a rather unfortunate incident involving Kunoichi, a mis-thrown shuriken and an angry wild boar! Oopsie!)

Kunoichi isn't the only one practicing furiously in the woods though. She spots a Chibi (cute) Samurai boy, who is also working his way through the ways of the lone warrior. But two can work so much better together than one, so Ninja meets Samurai for a show-stopping spectacular at the Annual Ninja and Samurai show!

Some words just elicit such a brilliant response from Charlotte and the word 'Ninja' is one of them. Oh she knows all about Ninjas (her schoolmates love pretending to be Ninjas at school, I'm guessing that Ninjago has a lot to do with this!) Kunoichi is an adorable character (as is the chibi samurai) and we loved the idea that children would love losing themselves in a story where they could vicariously pretend to be ninjas learning the ways of stealth, silence and surprise!

Delicious watercolour artwork from Sanae, and a lovely dose of ancient mythology woven carefully into a child-friendly story - with lots of cool explanations of the various terms and words at the back for students of the mystical Ninja arts to bone up on. Utterly brilliant!

Charlotte's best bit: Spotting Kunoichi and her Samurai pal at the Ninja Fayre

Daddy's Favourite bit: Exciting, brilliant, original and utterly wonderfully presented. Your little Ninjas and Samurais are going to go completely nuts for this book!





(Kindly sent to us for review by Sasquatch Books)