One Up – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Friendship, competition, tortoises, building, ice cream.
Children’s book title: One Up.
Children’s author: Ben Sanders.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Little Tiger .
ISBN: 9781801047005.
Recommended for children aged: 3-6 year-olds.
First published: Hardback August 2024.
This children’s book is ideal for: Reading aloud for pre-school to year 1 pupils and using it to discuss friendship and whether it matters who is the best at things and how you could prove it.
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Our review:
Blue and Green are tortoises. They are also best friends and each of them thinks they are the best of the best, but how will they prove it? With their houses on their backs, surely all they need to do is have the best building. Easy, right? Not really, and as the competition heats up, things get a bit out of hand! Now they are high up in the sky, while their homes are still on the ground AND they want ice cream! Whatever will they do? 
Our verdict:
This is a fun story to read aloud. It is bright and colourful with inventive illustrations that have plenty of detail and are just right for talking about. My only gripe and it could be my limitation rather than anyone else’s, but I’m not sure if I offered my grandchildren gelato, they would know what it was!
The buildings and the narrative leave plenty of room for discussion, even with the younger age group, especially as the different illustrations feature easily recognisable items. It is a book that will be read many times without everything being spotted straight away.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- Does it matter if you are better at something than your friends? Will the answer to this change as children get older, playing with, rather than alongside, their friends?
- When looking at the illustrations, maybe children could find things starting with a certain letter, especially as differentiating by colour won’t take long!
- If pupils were going to build a house with lots of floors or levels, what would it look like? What would it have to have in it?
- The tortoises want gelato, but does anyone know what that is? What other foods do we call by different names?
- Does the orange tortoise’s way of trying to be better work for everyone? Does having lots of ice cream cause a different set of problems?
Many thanks to Little Tiger for the review copy.
To order a class set of this book, please click below to order via uk.bookshop.org, an organisation that supports local bookshops, or Amazon.co.uk.
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If you like One Up by Ben Sanders you might also like: our reviews of 100 Things to Know About Sport by Usborne, Agent Harrier: This Book Will Self Destruct by Ben Sanders, High Top: Sole Mates by Tom Lacey, Last-Place Lin by Wai Chim, illustrated by Freda Chiu, I’m More Than A Sheep by Bethany Christou and Alone! by Barry Falls.
Browse our year 1 booklist.
