Music Book Review: Wheels on the Bus from Cocomelon

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You will almost certainly have heard of Cocomelon if you have a child under 5, as they have been all over YouTube for a long time. We have been watching Cocomelon songs on YouTube for years. In fact, I have linked to several Cocomelon songs on my playlists in the past.

I like Cocomelon videos for my children because they are animated versions of children’s nursery rhymes. They largely use the tune and words that I know and sing with the children, and they aren’t too annoying. Now my children are older and it’s all about Ryan, Lol Surprise dolls and Minecraft, I almost miss the time when they could watch Cocomelon songs for ages while I made dinner, or just caught my breath. Even though at the time, 5 or 10 minutes of it could feel like about 10 hours.

So when I saw that Cocomelon had released a picture book of one of my children’s favourite songs, Wheels on the Bus, I couldn’t resist it.

This is a picture book for young readers. It is a board book, so stands up well to young children’s explorations. Young children are not necessarily the most gentle readers – everything goes into their mouths, books are dropped, pulled and sometimes chucked across a room or into boxes, so they need to be quite robust.

I would say that this is a book for babies and toddlers if you are reading it to them – it is literally the words of the song with illustrations, so there is not much to the book to interest older children unless they are starting to learn to read for themselves where this would be a good book for them. The words would be familiar, and simple for new readers to follow along and attempt to read for themselves.

I do like these song books. Children love singing along to their favourite songs, and their parents and caregivers singing songs with and for them. As far as babies and young children are concerned, their care givers’ voices are simply the most wonderful sounding voices in the world! They also love snuggling up together with their loved ones to read a book. So this book perfectly combines the two.

The illustrations in the book are taken directly from the YouTube (now CBeebies series as well) video for the same song. They show the actions taken in the video for each of the verses – rolling hands and wrists round each other, for the wheels on the bus going round and round, a mummy saying ssh, ssh, ssh and so on. There are some colourful musical notes decorating each page as well. It is a short, and brightly colourful book that will appeal to children and they will really enjoy reading this book with you.

My only real gripe with the book, and it is simply because this is what is sung in the Cocomelon version of this song, is that each verse says that The wheels on the bus go round and round all through the town, instead of all day long. I am sure my children don’t care whether we sing either version of the son, they just like to sing it! And yes, we generally sing through the book rather than read it.

If you have enjoyed this review and it has made you want to buy your own copy of the book, then you can click on the link below which will take you straight through to Amazon. I should let you know that as this is an affiliate link if you do make a purchase using this link, then I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you, which will help me keep this blog running in the future! Thank you.

I bought this cute book from Amazon, and at the time of writing it costs £4.49, though the price on Amazon does change with demand.

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