I'm a full-time mummy

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: The Adventures of Squirky the Alien #2: What Happened to Planet Q?
Author: Melanie Lee    Illustrated by David Liew
Publisher: MPH Group Publishing Sdn Bhd (01-OCT-2014)
ISBN: 9789674152550
Paperback: 36 pages

Description from the product page:

"Squirky and his sister Emma discover that the capsule that he came to Earth in can also transform into a spaceship. They embark on an exciting space adventure with their first stop: the South Star! At the South Star, they meet Queen Stella, a beautiful and kind lady who seems rather sad and secretive. What is she hiding? Will she be able to help them find Squirky's birth parents?"

The Adventures of Squirky the Alien is actually a series of six (6) storybooks altogether. Currently, three (3) books are already released and available for purchase now at bookstores while the fourth (4th) book is in progress. If you wish to know more about the series, you can find out more at the FB page started by the author, Melanie Lee. The author, Melanie Lee, a writer based in Singapore, is also an adoptive parent herself. She adopted her son, Christian, who is now a healthy and happy 2-year-old boy living with her and her husband, Darren. Inspired by her son, Melanie then began working together with her friend, David Liew, who is the illustrator of these books, to produce the series."

I have blogged about our review of the 1st book, "The Adventures of Squirky the Alien #2: What Happened to Planet Q?" and for today's post, we continue on the journey with Squirky. I quickly refreshed through the storyline from book #1 and continued on with this book.

When we reached this page, I had to explain to our oldest child (he is 6.5 years old) as I had previously been telling him about gravity, oxygen and humans not being able to breathe in space due to lack of oxygen. Unlike the usual astronauts which he sees on other books, news etc that wear the special space suit with breathing apparatus, I told our boy that for Squirky and Emma, they do not need special devide to help them breathe, maybe because the environment in the planet is similar to planet Earth. That seems to satisfy his weird looks hahaha...

The illustrations in the second book are still gorgeous as ever. Love the stained glass feel of the illustrations.

As feedback in book #1, there are some letters in the second book that we feel is a bit difficult to read, for example, the letter 'i' and 't' as it sort of looks similar. Again, it is fairly easy to read through and understand the storyline. Do stay tune for the 3rd book as we find out what happened to planet Q.

The book is available at all major bookstores in Malaysia. You could also buy it online from mphonline bookstore.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

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I like to bring our kiddos to the playground whenever situations and weather permits. As usual, one morning after dropping off our oldest kiddo at kindy, I brought our girls to the playground and it rained earlier in the morning so the place was still a bit wet and the playground equipments are still wet so we ended up just walking around the playground while I tried looking for things to show our girls to keep them interested. Then I saw this...

Now why this falls into the 'Teaching & Learning Moments!'?

* I get to teach our girls not to simply touch any mushrooms (we don't know whether they are poisonous or not).

* I also gently explained that the poisonous ones can make your skin itchy or red or have rashes, so safer to just leave it alone and admire from a distance.

* I get to teach our youngest girl to pronounce the word 'mushroom' properly.

Win-win!

 ** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I have been sharing some of my favorite angpow pieces on an angpow collectors group in Facebook and some members have been telling me to continue sharing my memorable stories and so I thought, why not write it down, that way, our kiddos can read about it when they grow up next time, eh?

For those of you who are not familiar or never heard of the words 'Angpow' (also known as 'ang pau', 'ang pao', 'angpau'), here is a quick definition:

Angpow = Red Packet (filled with cash inside) given during festivals

So for today's angpow story, it comes from this piece of lovely angpow:

The first thing that caught my eyes when I saw this angpow was the bicycle. I love angpows with bicycles, have a few childhood memorable experiences with bicycle and bicycle with dog.

Next thing that caught my attention is the shophouse setting, with the wooden doors and wooden windows. If you look closely, the door at the groundfloor is a wooden swinging door like those cowboy town bar door.

It reminds me of a coffee shop in my late mum's hometown. It used to be a kopitiam (means coffee shop) but the business ended sometime after. However the owner still uses the premise for mahjong venue with his friends and my late mum used to go there to play mahjong with her friends.

I remember that I often go to the shop, gently pushing the door and being careful not to be hit back by the swinging door and looked out for my mum. There were up to 2-3 mahjong tables sometime and as a young child, I tried to be as quiet as I can possibly be without disturbing the adults there.

I would sneak in to ask my mum for a few cents so that I can buy snacks and junk foods before I go rounding around the kampung (means village) with my cousins on our bicycles hahah..

Nice memories...

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.