When I stop to think about it, the sheer volume of children’s books that move through our house is fairly impressive. The bookshelves are already overflowing with books we own, but that’s hardly enough variety. For that we take, at least, weekly trips to the library, where we always seem to have in excess of thirty books checked out at a time. And, because more books is never a bad thing, I’m happy to report that the two older girls now get to bring home a few books from the school library as well.

It’s a lot of books.

Some of them are bad, most of them are good and a few stand apart from the rest. Those special few that all the kids love and that we, the parents, don’t mind reading repeatedly.  Those books that seem to be written by the authors who really know the mind of a child.

They are the books that have a little something extra in them. That slightly intangible bend to the writing that kids adore. An aside that’s un-necessary. Little bits of information you don’t need. Silly words thrown in to make them giggle. A Knock At The Door has it all.

(It also has, if you want to be all adult-like about things, quite a lot of learning opportunities. After reading this book a few times I doubt my kids will ever misspell “half.” But, to be honest, I loved it for the same silliness that my kids did).

A week or so after we finished reading the book out loud together, I asked my daughters what they thought of it.

“I loved  it!” Ivy gushed.

I wish I could have written down what Ivy (8) and Clara (6) said next, but it came out in such a babbling enthusiastic mess of “Because letters are silly and don’t really talk!” and “I love the G wizard” and “Remember when…” and “Wasn’t that letter funny…” that I missed most of it.

But no matter what they said, I think their vote was definitively cast when Ivy went and got the book and we sat down to re-read two stories out of it before bed.

Would we recommend it? Yes! A most enthusiastic yes! Even Jane (4) giggled at things like L’s being stinkers, but then again, so did I!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I discovered this book because I’m a proud member of Rosie’s Book Review Team!