Mandy & Mitch and the Big Brave Boots

Mandy & Mitch and the Big Brave Boots is the debut picture book from Little Boot Books.  It has been written by Alison Hanson and illustrated by Samantha Theobald-Roe. The team at Little Boot Books hope to create a series of stories for little readers that tackle big ideas and their first book explores the feelings of worry and anxiety. Here's the blurb...

Mitch loves Mandy Mondays, but not even his best friend can stop the worry in his tummy from bubbling out of control. As Mitch's worry bubbles grow stronger, Mandy knows that she must help her friend to pop those worries once and for all...but how?

Mandy and Mitch invite readers everywhere into the complex world of early emotional development. Exploring feelings of worry and anxiety, this book's visceral imagery provides a resource for storytelling, conversation and play. So dive in, boots first!

The story uses worry bubbles to explain to little ones how we all worry from time to time and there are useful discussion prompts available on the Little Boot Books website. At the beginning of the story Mitch is left by his mummy at his friend's house. Mitch becomes anxious and the worry bubbles start to build up inside him. I shared this book with Mini Reviewer, Theo, who is 3. He immediately understood how Mitch might feel if his mummy left him and we went on to talk about how he feels when he is worried.

The story then shows how Mitch's friend, Mandy is feeling. She is clearly fed up as Mitch won't play with her. Mandy's daddy advises her that she should try and put herself in Mitch's shoes, which confuses Mandy. We discussed the meaning of this saying and talked about how Mandy could help Mitch before we continued with the story.

As Mandy is unable to fit into Mitch's shoes, she puts on her Brave Boots (her wellies) and tries all sorts of things to burst Mitch's worry bubbles. Eventually Mandy realises that Mitch needs to share his worries with her. We talked about what it means to share a worry and why this can help. Together, Mandy and Mitch are able to pop and blow the rest of bubbles away and they go on to play for the rest of the day.

We enjoyed sharing this book together. I particularly liked the use of worry bubbles to explain  and visually show how anxiety can bubble up and become out of control. The book made a good conversation starter and I found the discussion prompts on the Little Boot Books website helpful. As a Welly fan, Theo loved the idea of popping bubbles in his own Big Brave Boots so maybe this is something we should try!

Credit: Little Boot Books

Mandy & Mitch and the Big Brave Boots is available now from Amazon: £5.99 (paperback) £2.99 (kindle) £0.99 (audio book). Affiliate link below.

Until next time... HAPPY READING!

Kate & the Mini Reviewers xx

*Disclaimer: We received a copy of this book for the purpose of review. All opinions are as always our own. This post contains an affiliate link you can find out more about what this means here.