Ten minutes to bed: Little Dinosaur's big race by Rhiannon Fielding and Chris Chatterton

Designed to help children wind down after the day’s activities, readying them for bed, each of the tales in The land of Nod, opens with a map of the area covered. Here is the Giant’s town, Outer Space, Golden Swamp, we see the Creepy Castle and the Emerald Green laid out before us. Eager readers will scan the places shown, knowing they are in for a journey through the land that leads to sleep.

In this story, Rumble and his dinosaur friends are readying to compete in the competition on Midsummer’s Eve. All the other dinosaurs are surprised that Rumble is there, after all he is very small, and they all agree that he will come last.

Told in rhyming lines, children will quickly pick up the rhyming sequence and predict the rhyming words, eager to show their expertise to the reader as it is read out loud. Joining in along the way, many children will learn some of the lines and eagerly listen as Rumble competes with the other dinosaurs.

During the countdown, Rumble competes with flying dinosaurs, fairies, leaping and jumping dinosaurs, until at last with one minute to go they see the flag at the end of the race. But by this time they are all asleep.

Cute illustrations show the sparkly dinosaurs as they rush through the jungle, fly through the air and compete with each other to get to the flag while soft pastel colours warm each page, as the big eyed animals beguile the readers.

A texting story with which to end the day and help children fall to sleep.

A new book in the series, Ten minutes to bed, the others are shown on the last page of this book.

Themes: Dinosaurs, Sleep, Bed time, Competition.

Fran Knight