Vera Jewel is Late for School is the amusing story of a determined, innovative little girl who can’t manage to get to school on time and as the week goes on it doesn’t get any better! This is a great book to read at this time of year, most children have gone back to school but hopefully they don’t need to resort to any of Vera Jewel’s weird and wonderful solutions for getting there!
The Story: Vera Jewel is late for school on Monday as she has a problem with her bike. Throughout the week she comes up with more adventurous ways of getting there in time – all unsuccessful. Even camping outside the school gate backfires until Vera Jewel spends the weekend coming up with an amazing solution to her problem. A solution that also involves and excites her teacher and all her classmates!
Vera Jewel is Late for School is a rhyming story which starts on a Monday and takes us through each day of the week. During the story Vera is joined by a duck, a mule and the cow who jumped over the moon who are there for her at her lowest point but also help her with her final idea, Kind Vera rewards them for their support by including them in the solution to her problem. She’s a resourceful and imaginative heroine with fierce determination, we love the ideas that she comes up with for getting to school!
The rhyming text is easy to read and a lot of the story is told through Nicola Kent’s fabulous illustrations which are drawn on predominantly white backgrounds. They are bold, colourful and wonderfully busy and we love the way that many of the items that Vera uses on her way to school are repeated in the final spread.
The humorous details in the pictures make us laugh and as Vera arrives each day the class is engaged in a different lesson – we particularly like the sports lesson which shows her teacher doing star jumps.
Vera Jewel is Late for School is an entertaining story which is perfect to read in a nursery or Early Years classroom. There are so many wonderful details to look at, count and talk about and it also provides a fun introduction to the days of the week.
Age Range: 3 +
Author / Illustrator: Nicola Kent
We were very lucky to win our copy of Vera Jewel is Late for School in a Twitter competition – thank you so much to Nicola Kent for signing and sending it to us 🙂
You can find more stories about school on Story Snug’s Pinterest board.
Lovely illustrations! Should have read this to my 16 year old who was still in bed at 7:30am this morning when school starts at 8am! #MMBC
Oh no! I hope he got to school on time!!
What a fun sounding book. It seems great for this time of year with the kids going back to school. x
I thought so too which is why I waited a while to review it – but then my review was late too!!
Those illustrations look awfully inviting! I can see this being of great use in early years #readwithme
We love Nicola Kent’s illustrations, they’re so bright, colourful and wonderfully ‘busy’ 🙂
It looks very cute and entertaining. Would definitely be a good read for children who are preparing to start school.
It’s great to read to children who are starting school, am not sure that they should try some of Vera Jewel’s ideas though!
This looks like a lot of fun, I love the colours! I’ll look out for it when it’s getting closer to my youngest starting school. #ReadWithMe
It’s a really fun story and Nicola’s illustrations are awesome and very amusing!
The illustrations are fab. The page looks so busy that no wonder she was late for school.
We love the busyness of the illustrations and Vera Jewel’s ideas add lots more action and humour to them 🙂