Children's Book Review: Cooper and Me and the Winter Adventure

Cooper and Me is a delightful series featuring Cooper, a fun loving Labrador and his canine friends.  It's the brainchild of a mother daughter duo, Monique and Alexa Peters, who work together to write and illustrate the tales.  Each one helps kids learn how to cope with a challenge that a young child may encounter and is resolved with a solution that leads to a "happy ending".  I love the pictures that are based on Alexa's original drawings, they retain a kid drawn look that my five year old found very appealing.  The rhyming text is fun to read.

In Cooper and Me and the Winter Adventure!, the title character and his friend Bella the Morkie.  The pair go out to enjoy a day of playing in the snow and sledding down the town's biggest hill.  When they get to the bottom, they find themselves in an unfamiliar place.  They aren't sure what to do, should they sit and wait?  As it grows dark they realize they need to get home and begin to howl as loud as they could, and hear a bark back.  It's Trooper, the German Shepard, who helps them get home.

My daughter enjoyed the story, she really liked that it was about dogs. At the end of the story there is a space to add important information, that everyone should know if they get lost.  It's helpful to add your own there and practice it each time you read the book.  There's additional enrichment, like questions about the story and parents can go online and download  the Cooper and Me Theme song as well. 

Cooper and Me and the Winter Adventure! provides a nice, safe, way to introduce conversations about safety and what to do if you are lost.  It gave my daughter something to think about, without scaring her too much and worrying about getting lost.  She can see that things turned out okay and didn't get overly anxious, as she sometimes can when we talk about "scary" situations. 

She loved the idea that a little girl followed her dream and helped write a real book.  She loves to draw herself, and thought it was really neat that Alexa drew the pictures.  (I didn't go into detail about how the illustrations are based on drawings and just let her know Alexa helped.)  ER now wants to write books with me, so it's encouraged her interests in literature, always a good thing in my book!

Find out more about Cooper and Me on their website and blog.  Connect with Cooper and Me on Twitter and Facebook.  You can find about Cooper and Me's philanthropic causes on their about page.  I think it's wonderful how they are helping kids through their books and with their proceeds. 

Continuing Alexa and Monique's passion for giving back,$1 of every Winter Adventure book sold through February 2012 will be donated to the Lustgarten Foundation, which is America's largest private foundation dedicated solely to funding pancreatic cancer research.

You can help them help kids too!  Purchase one of the Cooper and Me titles on their website and through December 21st, for every book purchased they will donate one book to the Today Show Toy Drive! 

Use the code BUY 1 GIVE 1 at checkout!

Disclaimer: A complimentary copy of the book was provided.  However the experiences and opinions expressed within are personal and unbiased.  No other compensation was received.