I know that I’ve written about these books before (here and here), but my three year old has decided that she simply loves Isabella. That being the case, I couldn’t help but get my hands on the one book in the series that we hadn’t yet read. Now that we’ve read them all, I thought they deserved their own post.
The Isabella books are about a little girl with a marvelous imagination who pretends to be women in history, traveling to extraordinary places, and within the pages of classic stories. Her parents fantastically go along with all of her adventures and encourage her creative thinking.
In the first book of the series, My Name is Not Isabella, Isabella explores amazing women in history. From Sally Ride to Rosa Parks and even Marie Curie, Isabella explores some super strong women and knows that she can be anything she wants to be if she dares to dream big. Younger children won’t know who many, if not all, of these women are, but the books allow room to open up that dialogue to explain things. After the story, we learn more about each of these super women so that older children have room to grow with the book.
The second book in the series, which is the one we just got, is Isabella: Girl on the Go. In this installation, Isabella is spending the day with her father. Rather than being someone famous, here she pretends that she is in amazing destinations with various careers. There is nothing that she can’t imagine doing from archeologist to artist, warrior to queen. By pretending that her sandbox is an archeological site in Egypt to her garden being in the heart of Paris, she escapes her surroundings and the whole world becomes her playground. As with all of the Isabella books, after the story ends are 2 pages that go into detail about the locations with a quick blurb explaining each job.
The third book is currently E’s favorite of the series – Isabella: Star of the Story. This is a book shining a loving spotlight on books and the library. Mom and Dad are taking Isabella to the local library and as soon as she gets inside she heads “second star to the right and straight on to the children’s room.” Through the pages of the story, Isabella jumps into various books as she decides what she wants to check out. This is a great way to show of a love of great books, many of which are familiar to children.
We have been highly impressed with this series and both girls can get something different from the books. The tagline of the series is “Just how far can a little girl dream” and the answer is that there is a whole world of possibilities out there.
What a great series of books for young children. I remember in grade school falling in love with Madame Curie. I think my granddaughter would love this series.