Olly the White Van Book Series Product Review
Olly the Little White Van’s Website:
http://www.ollythelittlewhitevan.co.uk
What is Olly the Little White Van all about?
Olly the Little White Van is a pre-school TV show that currently airs on Milkshake and is 100% written, designed and animated in the UK. Olly and his friends have brought out a number of books, which are suitable for children aged 1 year plus and cater towards pre-school children’s practical, logic and problem solving skills.
How much does each book cost?
Chunky Story Books – RRP £3.99
Story Books – RRP £3.99
Press-out Sticker & Activity Fun Books – RRP £4.99
Sticker & Colouring Fun Books – RRP £3.99
Where can you buy Olly and the Little White Van books?
At all participating book stores
Reviewers:
Leyla Preston of motherhooddiaries.com (Mummy)
Aron (3 years old)
Aidan (2 years old)
Review:
All of us were very excited to receive all of the Olly and the Little White Van’s books in the series and we couldn’t wait to get stuck in and try them all out.
Chunky Story Books – RRP £3.99
The chunky story books were the boys’ favourite from the get go, simply because they are small, sturdy and easy to handle. Each of the chunky board books of Olly and his friends have painted edges and are perfect for little hands from 1 year old and up.
There are 4 books in the Chunky Story Books series, all related to Olly and his friends, who are Bazza, Royston and Jethro. Aron’s favourite was Olly, the main character, and Aidan’s favourite was Bazza, Olly’s best friend.
Olly
Olly, the main character in the whole series, is a friendly white van who loves to help whenever he can. He likes to have fun with his driver, Stan, and his favourite game is football. When he scores, the crowd cheers Olly’s name. When Olly is with his best friend, Bazza, everything is always ok in the end, no matter what happens. Olly is a keen racer and loves to drive very fast, so that he can come first, or at least second place.
Bazza
Bazza, the orange van, likes to get into trouble whenever he can. But, sometimes his cheeky tricks can land him into trouble. At the Bumpton Rally, Bazza ends up in squelchy mud, but Olly, his best friend, never lets him down and manages to break him free. (I can see why Aidan loves Bazza the best – their personalities are very similar!)
Royston
When Bumpton needs help, they always call Royston the fire engine because no job is too small for him. Royston is happy to meet a familiar face on a familiar street and if there’s a fire to put out or a cat up a tree, Royston is at the rescue! He likes to turn on his siren really loud when he’s racing around Bumpton town and even at the end of a long, busy day, Royston still wants to have fun and play.
Jethro
Jethro the tractor likes to take everything slow because, ‘Speed isn’t everything, you know!’ Jethro is big, blue and strong and always helps his friends when things go wrong. Jethro likes to look at art and he is just as smart as he is friendly. He also likes to watch birds fly and hear the crowd roar as he lines up his football, so he’s sure he can score.
Each chunky book has an easily digestible poem that the boys really loved. The words are simple, yet effective because the story behind each book gets to the point very quickly and paints a great picture of each character in the series. When reading these books again and again to the boys, they remembered the words that came next. Even Aidan, who is one month shy of 2, remembered which word came next before I read them. It’s a very clever way to engage the kids and get a feel of the character’s personality. I can easily understand why these books were the boys’ favourite.
Story Books
The Chauffer
In the story books, you get to delve deeper into the character’s lives and meet all the secondary characters in the series, like Stan, who is Olly’s driver, and Lisa the Limousine. The book talks about a very special day, Alice’s birthday (Stan’s wife), and Stan has booked Lisa the Limousine to take them out for a special birthday dinner. Olly is very excited to see Lisa drive up to the house, but Lisa’s car phone rings and Sir Ronald Grump informs her that she has been double-booked that day. She is supposed to pick up Sir Ronald Grump at the station and drive him to an important meeting. Olly is always around to lend a helping hand and offers to take Sir Ronald Grump to the meeting, so that Lisa can drive Stan and Alice to the restaurant as planned.
Sir Ronald Grump is a real grump and is waits impatiently for Lisa the Limousine to arrive, instead he finds Olly coming to pick him up.
‘He’s very cross!’ Aron exclaims. (Aidan at this point, loses interest and reaches out for his trains on our dining table!)
Olly works hard to impress Sir Ronald Grump, but Sir Ronald is only interested in getting to the Grump Tower in twenty minutes. So Olly drives as fast as he can, but they are stopped by a traffic jam.
Do they make it to the meeting on time? It’s up to you to find out!
Aron really enjoyed ‘The Chauffer’ book. He was eagerly waiting to find out whether Sir Ronald Grump made it to his meeting on time and impatiently turned the pages as I was reading them to find out. The illustrations in the book tell a lot of the story, so Aron understood what was going on very well. He even had a go at reading some of the words. Aidan, on the other hand, knew what was going to happen and lost interest. One step ahead…
The Bumpton Rally
The Bumpton Rally talks about the annual town race in Bumpton. Olly and his driver, Stan, are preparing to take part. Olly’s friend, Bazza, is also taking part and doesn’t hide the fact that he’s there to win the race, even though the annual Bumpton Rally is really just a bit of fun. Bazza and Olly banter with each other at who’s faster than who whilst all the vehicles make their way to the start line to get ready to start the race. Other drivers taking part are Tasha, Dirk and, surprisingly Jethro, who believes his slow and steady pace will win the race. The race starts and there are a lot of bumps on the road for the drivers. A sudden twist in the story causes some of the drivers to run into problems.
But, who comes first?
The Bumpton Rally was Aidan’s favourite story book because it involved a lot of fast cars racing against each other. Aron enjoyed the book too, but I could tell he was just biding his time, so that he could get me to read the 4 chunky story books again.
Again, the illustrations tell the story as much as the words, so both boys really enjoyed flicking through the pages and studying the pictures as I was reading to them. It’s a really fun story and it contains a lot of hidden morals, which teach the boys that being fast and strong may not always be the answer, but to think with your head and keep at a steady pace, can win you the race in the long run. (Did I just give the story away?)
Press-out Sticker & Activity Fun Book
The Press-out Sticker & Activity Fun Book is a fantastic educational book catered towards pre-school children, so Aron was the perfect age to give everything a go in the book.
There are a number of activities in the book, such as:
- Odd one out (Spot which picture is the odd one out)
- Let’s count! (where you have to count how many pictures of each character are on the page and find the answer stickers (Aron preferred to write the numbers instead, as you can see from the picture below)
- Sticker Fun! (Find the stickers appended to the book and place them on the correct images to complete the picture (Aron got all of these right straight away, but it was a lot of fun helping him go through every sticker and eliminating the incorrect ones first).
- Double Trouble! (Spot how many different pairs of pictures you can see, for which there is an answer sticker for. Aron, again, preferred to write the number instead and I didn’t want to stop him, as he has only just started using a pen and I wanted him to practice writing his numbers.)
- Colouring fun! (A double page of characters in the series for you to have fun colouring in.)
- Jolly Olly! (Perfect for practicing motor skills – join all the dots around the pictures and then find the stickers to match.)
- A board game and pieces to press out (Aron wasn’t at all interested in trying this out, but I assume it’s because he is too young and didn’t understand the point of the game.)
- Spot the difference (where you have to find all five differences between two almost identical pictures)
- Who is who? (Find the name stickers for each vehicle (I was really surprised and impressed that Aron could spot the correct word for each picture. The activities in this book forced him to have to read the character’s names in order to complete the activity and he remembered the names for this particular activity.)
- Where is Olly? (This is a blank page where you can choose to draw Olly at the beach, in the town or on the farm. Aron didn’t attempt this at all, but he hasn’t started drawing yet, so I will patiently wait until he’s more confident in his drawing skills and attempt this activity with him again).
- Who wins the race? (Where you need to follow the lines to match the driver to the correct place they came in the race and find the stickers that correspond to the number. Aron correctly used his pen to follow the lines to the drivers’ correct places, but, again, refused to find the stickers and instead write the numbers down with his pen. Not complaining!)
- Copy and colour (Use the grid below the picture of Olly, which is drawn on an identical grid, as a guide to draw your own picture of the character. Aron didn’t attempt this at all, but I believe he will arrive at this drawing stage in his own time.)
- Wordsearch! (Find all the names listed in the wordsearch grid given. I had to help Aron with this as he’s only just started reading and found it very difficult to distinguish words from the jumble of letters in the grid. Admittedly, I ended up completing the wordsearch myself because it was fun, but I made sure Aron watched me do the whole thing and point out where the words were).
- Sticker Fun! (More sticker fun where you need to find the correct stickers to complete the pictures given. This activity turned out to be Aron’s favourite and I quickly realised how much fun Aron has with stickers in general, so I made a mental note to buy more sticker books in the future).
- Answer page (Where you will find all the answers to the activities in the book. We didn’t use it as I am a walking answer page!)
I was very impressed with the amount of diverse activities that you could find in one book. Each activity caters to so many developing skills which are vital for a pre-schooler of Aron’s age. I immediately saw an improvement in Aron’s writing skills and reasoning ability and definitely believe that the Sticker & Activity Fun book had a lot to do with Aron’s progress.
Sticker & Colouring Fun Book
The Sticker & Colouring Fun Book contains a lot of very simple pictures for the boys to colour in and a double page full of tiny stickers of all the characters in the series. The boys didn’t attempt this book at all, but only because they were so interested in the other books in the series that I decided not to push them to complete this particular book.
Left to their own devices, however, the boys ended up adding a lot of the stickers to our fridge…
What did I like most about Olly and the Little White Van Books Series?
I liked how diverse and educational the Press-out Sticker & Activity Fun Book was for Aron and, in the future, Aidan. The book really honed in on Aron’s writing skills and the ability to think logically about the problems posed in the book.
I would imagine the boys liked the chunky story books the most because they are easy to handle, the storylines are simple to digest, and the boys related to each main character’s personality, which was so well portrayed in the story.
What to watch out for:
After a lot of handling from both boys, one of the chunky story books started to pull apart in the middle. I don’t think that this is a fault in the book, but down to my boys’ heavy handling.
Other points to note:
The boys have not watched the TV show yet, and I will make sure I record a couple of episodes on Sky, so they can sit down and understand the characters and the story lines before reading the books and attempting the activities again. They really enjoyed the characters and I think the TV show will cement their interest indefinitely.
Rating:
5 out of 5, simply for the versatility of the book series. You have an easily digestible chunky story book series for 1 year old plus, activity and sticker books for pre-schoolers, and story books for children of all ages to enjoy.
Fantastic and very educational!
