Who are you, Mr Goo?
Zanri Kritzinger and illustrator Stephen Wallace
Tafelberg
Review: Lauren O’Connor-May
Slime is the new kiddy trend that’s everywhere, including in this book, which features an edible slime recipe at the end.
The rhyming story is about Mr Goo, an imaginary friend.
He is freshly-graduated from Imaginary School, where colourful and oddball creatures get acquainted with their special “human friend”.
The imaginary friends all have a similar set of quirks to the children they’re matched with, except Mr Goo.
One would suspect Mr Goo of being a rather slimy character but he is actually quite sweet and goes out of his way to befriend lonely Ted, as his child-match is known, but Ted is not interested in any of his tricks.
In the end, Mr Goo decided teamwork is the way to go and calls in reinforcements to help him cheer up the grouchy little boy.
The book’s bright illustrations beautifully complement the text-light story.
I liked this children’s book because it was short enough to read in a few minutes – it’s only 28-short-pages-long – but the colourful pictures suggest side-stories, which kept my children engaged and interested long after we had finished the main story.
A word of caution though, Mr Goo is not the only sweet thing in the book. The slime recipe calls for a whole bag of marshmallows, so rather do the recipe on a day when your children will have a lot of time to wear down from a huge sugar high.
We are giving away six copies of Who are you, Mr Goo? and all you have to do to enter is email your name, surname, telephone number and physical address to roshiela.moonsamy@inl.co.za with Mr Goo competition in the subject line before midnight on Sunday November 4. Please also include the name of the newspaper in which you saw the competition.
