Story Soup by Abie Longstaff & Nila Aye

Story Soup is a fun, fast paced story in which imagination and sibling rivalry lead to an action packed, madcap adventure with a diverse range of characters. Ollie isn’t happy when sister Susie joins him to make Story Soup but when their characters get into danger they must find a way to work together to help them. We couldn’t put this page turning picture book down as the story got crazier and more action packed…

The Story: Ollie adds a skateboard to his soup pot so he can mix a story. The beginning of a story shoots out but Ollie isn’t happy when his sister Susie adds a princess. Arguments ensue about whose story it is as Susie and Ollie throw more and more into the pot. When a vampire pony bites the skateboard in half Ollie argues with Susie. This leads to disastrous consequences for the characters in their story and leads to Ollie and Susie working together to save them…

Story Soup is full of action, adventure and diverse characters. A pirate, a princess, a pair of teeth and a banana are some of the items that get thrown into the pot. But when Ollie and Susie’s main characters get into trouble they save them using honey and a butter dish. The misunderstood pirate and the feisty princess’s rivalry mirrors the rivalry between siblings but they also find a way to solve their differences which leads to an invitation to a royal ball.

There’s lots of humour in the story, it really shows how you can mix up seemingly unrelated items to come up with a fun adventure. We don’t want to give away the plot of Ollie and Susie’s story but it gets more and more crazy and more and more dangerous – it really had us turning the pages to see what would happen next.

The illustrations are full of detail and we love the way that the kitchen looks like a fairytale cottage – several of the items on the first page give clues about what goes into Ollie and Susie’s soup pot…

Story Soup is a wonderful celebration of the power of imagination and gives a great introduction to how to create a story. It could be used to introduce story writing sessions in a primary classroom and can stimulate discussion to inspire children’s own story writing ideas. There’s even a story soup recipe at the end of the book which guides a child through the story writing process – it tells them what equipment they need and gives ideas as to how a writer can mix unconnected ingredients to make a fun and wacky story like Ollie and Susie’s. 

Author: Abie Longstaff / Illustrator: Nila Aye

Thank you Templar Books for sending a review copy of this brilliantly written, entertaining story 🙂


Related posts


Enjoyed this? Share or comment.

Leave a Reply