Police people is a book written by Neil Pearsall who is a serving Police Officer spending his spare time writing stories for children. The books are suitable for early readers (5 – 8 years) and provide children with easy to read sentences and key words. It was illustrated by Steven Silverwood. PC Bill’s Special Day is Neil’s first book release in a series of 8 launched on 14 November 2012. You can buy the book from the website priced at £4.99 or Bertram’s wholesalers ISBN 978-095745110-0.
For those who don’t know about Police People, this is the information for grown ups:
“Police People” was created, and the stories are written, to try and improve relations between young people and the Police. Most importantly, it is aimed to provide entertainment and a lighter insight to what we do. Hopefully, we can encourage young people, as they get older, to interact more with “the local bobby”. This may make our communities a better, safer place to be in the future.
Before I go into details, let me introduce you to Blue Hill. Blue Hill is a small town in the county of Copshire. Not many people live there, but there is always something happening to keep the Police people busy. The Police people are PC Bill, PC Katie, SGT Peel, PC Naz, Siren is the police car and Nelson is the police dog.
My first impression is excellent. The print quality is great and the text is easy to read. The front and back covers are glossy and each page is made from thick paper. The book itself measures about 21 x 21 cm and consists of 26 pages. It is a very light book that you can pack to read on holiday.
On the first page of the book, there is a map of Blue Hill. Whenever a new place is mentioned in the book, Mr K will refer back to the map to try to tell me where it is. Like me, I think Mr K likes to visualise things and referring back to the map was really helpful for that. The book tells the story of PC Bill’s birthday, but he was a bit disappointed that nobody had remembered or wished him a Happy Birthday and he thought they had all forgotten. But had they?
It is well written and easy to follow. It teaches children to help someone who needs help. You can also view part of the book on their Virtual Book Viewer. Have a look and see if you like it.
Website: I had a look at their website and found myself whistling along to the catchy tune that plays on the home page. There is a map where you can view Copshire and a list of the Police people characters. Under the Activities page, there is a quiz for children to play. I did have a play and it to be very informative. Grown ups can print out the picture for children to colour. There is also a very useful Police People Alphabet which is a list of the phonetic alphabet that real police use. Now I know to say Echo for E instead of Elephant! I always tell people on the phone, my name is E for Elephant, I for ice cream …etc. I will have to print it out!
I believe in years to come, Cbeebies will make it into a TV show! Watch out Fireman Sam! I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It is very well written and well priced at RRP £4.99. Want to know more about Police people?
Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher for free. However, they have not paid me for this review, and they do not exercise any editorial control over my review or anything else on this site.
