Geronimo Stilton #59: Welcome to Moldy Manor product reviews

My eldest daughter is a big fan of Geronimo Stilton and we read his books quite often. I got this book to review recently, and I was interested to see how he would fair with this side of his family featuring again. Last book they featured in, Gerry was treated very poorly.

I started out reading it to my youngest. She is starting to get more of an attention span for longer books and some kid's novels have worked out well for her. This book however, didn't hold her attention as much as others have. She liked looking at the pictures, but could not contain herself and took the book off me several times a night to flick through it and look at the pictures instead of listening. If anything, while it was not the book for her, she still loved the pictures of the silly mice. The comedy of each illustration was not lost on her.

As I read this book through to my eldest, she and I both felt the same. Geronimo gets rail-roaded into a bad situation and then is left to fix it all himself. Now this is not an unusual thing for Mr Stilton, but I felt that the beginning part was really a bit more mean than normal. I was kinda horrified that it happened, that he gets the blame but also that he seems to just roll over. It is in keeping with his kind and cowardly nature, but it made us feel awful for him as well.

While the situation was difficult to read through in the beginning, he bears all the bad with his usual grace and it has a good moral about staying true to your ideals and principles. This is a great message, and I am glad that there was something really positive to take away from it. Often, you don't know what you stand for until you are really tested after all.

What happens when Geronimo finds he has a really low bank balance? Even worse is his grandfather's solution.

The front cover has an interesting picture. I read this book to my young sons and my 5 year old was excited 5 hat he could read some of the words (he was happy to see the word I) and he really liked the mini comic strip throughout the story, parts of 5he story had him laughing and parts had him going yuck. My 7 year old really liked the colourful fonts and the effects used in the writing. Unfortunately they both lost interest about 3/4 through the book but both have asked to watch more Geronimo Stilton on demand.

I liked how the language used was easy to understand and the words were not big complicated words so kids can read and engage in the story for themselves. I thought the grandfather's solution was a bit drastic and did feel a bit sorry for Geronimo, my boys thought it was rather funny when Geronimo walked into things and they loved the illustrations.

Thanks Scholastic for providing such a wonderful selection of amazing books that is sure to encourage my boys to enjoy reading and encourage them to think about what is happening in the story and to be confident on expressing their feelings. I will continue to support a great series .