A Letter For Ellie How To Get There by Marie Zhang

Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The story of Eve the elephant looking for the post office in the new town that she has just moved to.

Eve gets directions from every main public figure you could think of nearly and still cannot find the post office.

Not until nearly having a full tour of the does she reach her destination.

Everyone gets lost sometimes but maybe we need to figure out how to take clear directions.

I gave this book 3 stars as it was a cute story and the tour around the town was adorable but we never really got down to the bottom of why Eve had such a hard time finding the post office.

Thank you to netgalley the author Marie Zhang for the e book copy for my honest review

Eve, an adorable baby elephant, has recently moved to a new town and misses her best friend Ellie. She decides to write Ellie a letter and then must find the local post office to mail it. Unaccustomed to the layout of the town she relies on the locals to direct her to her designated destination.

She receives guidance from a fireman, policeman, dentist, doctor and teacher, just to name a few. They all are happy to give her proper directions and show her kindness in doing so. She posts her letter and is very grateful to discover where the post office is located in case she writes more letters to her friend.

This book teaches about the concepts of left and right, various buildings around the neighbourhood and the people that work in them. The rhyming text encourages children to notice and work with the sounds within words. They will enjoy the rhymn of language and learn to read with expression and understanding. Children will have better phonemic awareness with exposure to rhymes and poetry. The book is relatable and is perfect for the targeted age group, ESL ( English as a Second Language) and EFL ( English as a Foreign Language ) children. The illustration are colourful and the animal characters are endearing. I recommend this book.

I have to be honest, when I read this book, I had only seen the cover and not actually read the description and to say I wasn’t impressed, is a VERY polite way of putting it… I did not see the point to the story and mumbled to myself that this was to childish for anything over the age of 3 at best and even thought I couldn’t justify more than 1 star. HOWEVER I’ve actually read the description of the book now and it suddenly makes sense! this is a very good book for ESL and/or EFL learners. it is easy to read, thanks to the short and well structured sentences. The pictures supply the building blocks required to piece it all together. So yes for the purpose of ESL/EFL learners, it’s doing a great job, but don’t ask me to read this to my native speaker nearly 3 year old. He will not be interested in the least and neither am I. Even though the sentences are short and very few of them, these 24 pages were agony. So for me personally this book gets a 1 out of 5 stars, however based on the purpose its created for (ESL/EFL learners) i'm giving this 4 out of 5 stars.

A Letter for Ellie: How to Get There is an adorably illustrated picture book about a young elephant called Eve struggling to find the post office. It's a straightforward concept, which is perfect for this genre, and its repetitive nature (particularly the rhyming refrains) makes it enjoyable to read aloud.

I believe this title is more suited to children who are very young (or those who are learning English as a second language) rather than children who are already fluent, however. This is because the latter may become frustrated by the story's simplicity: it simply shows Eve visiting different places, such as a school and a dental clinic, and being told to go 'left' or 'right' to find the post office. I don't mean to say the simplicity is a fault, though - far from it! I think it is excellent in terms of its tone. This is especially because it teaches readers about various buildings as well as the people who work in them, using the pictures alongside the text to help children identify places they're already familiar with.

With all of that being said, I was somewhat disappointed by the ending, if only because I wanted to read more! The story didn't feel quite finished for me, and I was concerned that my copy was missing pages. Even just one more spread could have provided some closure and it would have been nice to see Eve actually posting Ellie's letter.

There truly is a lot to enjoy about this book though, and I do plan to seek out more of Marie Zhang's work. I especially enjoyed seeing so many different animal species in one book, and they were truly exquisite drawn on their hind legs! Plus, I do love a good rhyming text.

I can’t give it more than 2 starts. The pictures were repetitions and I usually don’t like that.

I understand the purpose of the book is to tell left from right but I can’t see any real help in the drawings.

This could have been a story with a extra teaching in it, I like my son to learn something from each story, at the end he was the one to tell me “is it over like that?”

I think some extra pages can help create a message! Since Ellie is looking for the post office because she feels lonely, she might realize in the end that she saw a lot of places on her way there, (learnt how to tell left from right) and meet a lot of new nice people, so she can stop feeling lonely.

While this book is simplistic for a native speaker, this book would be amazing for children who are English Language Learners. They will connect with the character who moved away and learn vocabulary for places around town. They will also learn the names of community helpers associated with the town places. Children will also learn left and right with the community helper characters pointing in the respective direction. Nicely done!