As Parragon Bookbuddies, we receive a book in the post every month. This month’s selection arrived last week, a funny and colourful book called Underpants Wonderpants.

Underpants Wonderpants is a book about a superhero dog who wears underpants and solves all his problems with underpants.

Here’s the description:Is it an eagle? Is it a plane? No – it’s Underpants Wonderpants to the rescue again! Whenever you need him in sun, snow or shower, he’ll sort out your problems with underpants power! He sorts out a pantachute for a queen in distress, puts out a fire with his super-pant-scoop… But that’s not the end of his super-pants day. The aliens are heading towards Earth! Can Wonderpants’ underpants power save the world in this laugh-out-loud rhyme to share?

Something that really struck me in reading this book to Ameli is that I would never have chosen it off a shelf, because it’s a ‘silly’ book, I mean, who uses underpants for a fishing net? a hammock? a slingshot? a baby carrier? Well, Underpants Wonderpants does, and it made my 3 year old giggle on almost every page. For that alone, I think it’s perfect as it exposes her to humour I never would have.

While most of the book is very easy reading, with it’s rhythmical tempo and rhymes, there was just one word she didn’t know – mirth – so we looked it up (I like her to work for the answers sometimes, not just get them from me) and then I wrote it down, and she copied it.

I tend to make a bit of book-themed fun from the books we’re reading in the hopes of bringing them to life and encouraging a love of reading, so we used some pipecleaners and beads to make a ‘super hero belt’ along with some shrinkles from which we designed our own superhero ‘W’ belt buckle badge. We used a play table red table cloth as a cape and had a morning of role play, which was quite sweet.

Another regular and easily adaptable activity is colouring, decorating, stamping, stickering or glueing pictures that go with the theme. Today I chose to cut some pantaloon style underpants from an A3 sheet of paper, and Ameli made swirls, glued pompoms and glitter and made some special underpants for the superhero pup t
o use in his superhero antics.

Have you read Underpants Wonderpants?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.