NOW CLOSED: Calling all parents of children aged 1 to 7. Do you want to join Pearson's Book Review Panel?

[AnnMumsnet]

You may know Mumsnet have been working with Pearson to provide some special learning-related content for you.

Linked to the site is a Pearson shop where you can buy educational books for children ? Pearson say, "There are touch & feel books for your littlest learners, brilliant fiction and non?fiction for your early readers, science and history books for 9?11 year olds and much more besides ? all at great prices and with free UK P&P on all orders over £24.99".

They have now asked us to find 80 Mumsnetters to join a special book review panel. To take part you must:

~ live in the UK
~ have a child aged from 1?7 - in KS1/p2 (If you have more than one child aged 7 and under please choose one child to take part in this review with)
~ be willing to review (and keep!) up to 5 packs of books before the end of the year

[Please note at some stage we will be recruiting parents of children aged 8?11.]

Each reviewer will be sent up to 5 packs of books before the end of the year for review. You'll be asked to take a proper look at the pack, read the books with your child, maybe get together with a group of mums to see what they think, and then submit your review on a special review thread on Talk. Panellists will be asked to submit their reviews within 2 weeks of receiving their review packs. You must review each book pack you receive. If you want to opt out of the project you can at any stage by emailing MNHQ.

If you are selected to take part, MN will email you to let you know. We will then pass on your name, age and gender of your child, and address details to Pearson for them to dispatch your books.

Each panellist will be able to keep the packs they review. Pack values vary from around £7.00 to around £30.00 and contain up to 24 titles. As a thank you for taking part there will be a monthly prize draw (on the last day of each month) for all those who have submitted a review in that month. The prize each month will be £50 of John Lewis vouchers.

The reviews will be used by Pearson to help promote the books to other Mumsnetters ? they will link to the feedback thread from the book shop pages and will feature the reviews you send in on the site. Pearson also say "we want the reviews to help us refine and improve our selection of packs for the shop, so if a particular programme is receiving rave reviews, we'll add more titles into the shop and if something isn't being received well, we'll use this feedback to refine our offering."

So if you and your child would like to take part please add your details here.

The first packs will be sent out in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks, MNHQ

Theprincessroyalfiggypants......we got the same as you. A bit odd really. My youngest just turned 3 today so is way too young to actually read the books himself. And as phonic books they are too short to be a story to read to him. Very odd.

Sorry! Just realised I called you figgypants instead of figgyroll! Sorry!

I may now change to figgypants on the strength of that as pants is my dd's favourite name - now a story with that in.........

I personally think we got put in the wrong category as dd doesn't start school until 2012!

We would have been better with the phonics books I think.
DS was most disappointed they were books with no pictures.

I suppose the feedback so far is that the groupings don't seem to fit our actual children at the moment. I was thinking dd would love Each Pear Plum etc...............

My letter says we're in the Pre-school Panel too, sounds like the same books as ThePrincess and IlanaK!

Reading the back of the Phonics Bug letter, it says the books are designed for children to read on their own rather than being read together books.

So do they mind waiting another few years for my review, until DD has learnt how to talk and read??

Was really looking forward to this research as well as dd adores books to the point of ridiculous but likes to share them with dh and I, I don't want to put her off as I could feel her being a little disinterested as there wasn't enough of it or a story.

Yay! We got ours today. They look pretty good, though there is one on exercise that DS has labelled as "a girl's book"

They actually do seem to be a good match for the stage DS is at now (he's starting year 2 in September), so I'm pretty excited to get going!

arrived today. We have the right pack, a Year one bug club pack, DS joins year 1 in sept.

First impressions. Nice books, DS will LOVE the lego one- even tho it is really an extended advert for the toy brand. Teh first few book in the pack range will be about right for where his reading is now, the will stretch him but not be impossible, teh rest will become right level as his reading improves. I plan on sharing teh love and loaning some out to a friend with a child just finished year 1 and seeing what she thinks.

Thank you for extending my review dead line, I hadn't expected 17 books in one pack.

I'm on the pre-school panel too and also got the 4 Bugs books (plus stickers and mousemat that is actually causing major stress in our household at the moment...but that's another story! )
Anyway, the books are quite a good fit for DS (3.9) at the moment as he can recognise most letters and some simple words (like Dad) so he can have a stab at reading them with lots of guidance from me although he's nowhere near being able to read independently.
Not sure what your 1 year old would do with them though Spirael! V odd that you got them too

still no book :(

Books arrived yesterday. DD1 is so excited. She has massive confidence issues when it comes to literacy so it was lovely to see her so excited.

We had the year 2 set, 24 books. Most of them look interesting enough for her. She can't wait to get to the Ben 10 one!

DS is loving his books, all seventeen of them. He takes them to bed at night and had read a few to me and is working through the rest. So far he isn't really having any issues with reading, except that he sometimes skips words or replaces them with what he expects rather than reading every word.

Where do we submit reviews and is there a general stucture that would be preferred? So far we are just familiarising ourselves with the stories and checking out the questions and activities in the books.

Yay, been selected too and didnt know as we've been away, and only realised when I checked my post..BUT! Pearson have sent out the wrong book pack for me too, (the phonics one for my 2 year old DD), and Ive got an email in my inbox from Ann saying pearson are going to send the correct pack out to me next week.

In the meantime, DD is enjoying the stickers immensely

by the way, how come I didnt get an email saying I'd been selected?? I just got a pack of books. Did everyone get welcome emails? Did I not get one because they knew I was away? MN...are you watching me?

Oh I see now perhaps why we didn't get picked if at 3.9 they would be expecting them to have a go at reading themselves, DS has severe speech delay shame, as books have brought him on tons. No way he'd be able to have a stab at reading though - even though he completely understands where words are, that they convey things to us and wants to know what everything says. Hope everyone picked is enjoying them though! [sile]

oops meant

We got three books - The Railway Children, The Secret Garden and Charlotte's Web. DC is having a go at reading Charlotte's Web but won't be able to read the other two himself. I love the books, they are great stories but are they supposed to be able to read them by themself? DC is 6 and can't.

I hate to sound ungrateful but is it just me that thinks that The Railway Children and The Secret Garden are not really meant for 6/7 year old children?

I am so glad we got those books but I want to do a proper review of them and I think it'd be better for a 8/9 year old because of some bits in the stories - with the Dad being sent to prison in The Railway Children and the mother dying in The Secret Garden and the girl being sent to England away from her father.

BelleEnd, what did you get? My DC is also starting Year 2 in September.

mumatron, we had the year 2 set of books as well - 3 of them; there must be more than one set unless we got the wrong ones.
We got The Secret Garden, The Railway Children (beyond DCs reading ability) and Charlotte's Web (which DC is having a go at but finding it hard).

Fannyfifer, I think we got the same book pack and I thought the same as you.

I am at the secret garden and the railway children for year 2! I got a year two pack, but it's pretty well suited to his age- There's a Casper the friendly ghost book, one about festivals, an adventure one about new york, and a gymnastics one. Nothing like as hard as the ones you listed for the same age...
I wonder if the pack I got was for the child to read, and the ones you got were for a parent to read to the child? They may be going for two approaches here...
DS1 read them all today except for the gym one (which he says "is for girls" ) and they were really very good- Far better than the bland books he gets at school. I was really impressed with his reading, actually, as English is his second language. I think it was the lure of ghosts and monsters that spurred him on. :o

I had the same as BelleEnd no Railway children for us.

There was a post on the original thread saying there would be another chance for people with older dc to review some packs. maybe it's just a mix up.

BelleEnd, yes, I am sure they must be for me to read - but the content is not really for a 6 year old either IMO. It says "read the books with your child" not "read the books to your child" so I'm not sure really whether they want DC to have a go at reading them.
I'll be hard pushed to read those three to DC over a week - we usually read a chapter a night before bed, at the moment I'm reading him Winnie the Pooh. On that basis it is going to be 3 weeks for Charlotte's Web alone.
Amazon have all three books in the age 9-11 section and WHS have them in the 8+ section.

It sounds like it to me, I've put the books on the shelf and will wait and see what Mumsnet say. Hopefully they are reading this thread.