If You’re Cheeky and You Know It

If You’re Cheeky and You Know It by P.Crumble, illustrations by Chris Kennett (Scholastic Australia)
PB RRP $13.99
ISBN 978-1-74283-647-8
Reviewed by Jenny Heslop

If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands... Most young children will recognise these lyrics. They know and love them, happy to spend time playing with the sounds, actions and echoes the song creates. And I’m sure they will love the twist that If You’re Cheeky and You Know It provides.

Each page encourages the young reader to become a different animal - If you’re a penguin and you know it waddle around – and is accompanied by glorious pictures of the animals themselves. As each animal is introduced, it follows the others on the next page so the group gets larger as the book moves on.

And what fabulous animals they are. The illustrator, Chris Kennett, draws very cute, funny and loveable animals who dominate the pages with humour, personality and movement. This is just what young children are attracted to.

If You’re Cheeky and You Know It is a book children can become involved in. It cleverly takes a feature of each animal, such as the giraffe’s neck, and turns it into an action which can be echoed. This book deserves to be wildly popular and will have toddlers chasing their tails, staring like meerkats or wiggling their rumps, like hippopotamuses.