Cover Image: Ella Has A Plan

Ella Has A Plan

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Member Reviews

Ella Has A Plan by Davina Hamilton is a wonderful book about Ella and her problem solving with kindness in order to get her cousins to stop arguing. The illustrations are beautiful, and the rhyming is cute. The amount of text is a tad long for the story, and I feel it could be a bit more concise. The message is great - kindness, curiosity, patience, problem solving. Overall it's a fun story for all ages with an uplifting moral.

Thank you to NetGalley and The Ella Riley Group for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is a beautifully illustrated children's book about Ella who's worried about her cousins coming to her mum's party because they always argue and fall out.
She thinks of a plan to get them to stop arguing.
This book is in rhyming format, but because there is alot of text, the rhyming format doesnt sit particularly well.
A good book but could have been better.

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Love the message and story! Fun writing that is a great read for all ages. I would definitely recommend.

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Ella Has A Plan is a good book for young children. Suitable for children who have a lot of curiosities and this book is good for development of problem solving skills.

The writing is just okay. It is a normal story about how to stop Ella cousins, Taye and Jade from arguing. Ella shows her determination to solve this problem. She has one goal which is she doesn't want anyone to ruin the party and she is so smart. She asked her grandfather to tell her a story on how he came out with a brilliant plan to settle this issues between her aunts. Ella had finally came out with a brilliant plan and solved the issue.

Ella Has A Plan has great illustrations and they are bigger illustrations on every page compare to the text. The writing is just okay. This book is also suitable for parents or teachers to read out loud to the children as it rhymes. Overall, it's a good book to read and it's fun.

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Ella is determined to figure out how to keep her cousins from fighting and ruining her mother’s party. This is a cute book with nice illustrations. The story meanders a bit and, in my opinion, would have been served better without the rhyming, but it is a good book to help diversify a collection. It shows a happy multigeneration black family and the engenuity of a little girl.

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The illustrations are my favorite part of this book. The storyline is so-so. The rhymes are, at times, forced. cute story, but not earth shattering.

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Such an amazing book to have in your home library and/or your classroom. I love these characters because they show diversity in a loving amazing way. Also, this book gives us a sense of a bonded/ caring family, in a diverse home. It warms my hear to see a diverse family unit shed in good light.

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Ella Has A Plan tells the story of Ella, who is a conflict mediator without realizing it. Concerned that her argumentative cousins will ruin her mother's big party, Ella seeks out the advice of her great-grandfather. However, Ella learns that she can fix this problem through her own machinations--without ever hearing her great-grandfather's story! Ella Has A Plan has delightful rhyming prose, making it an excellent read-aloud for children. It also has enjoyable illustrations featuring characters of color who all have distinctive hairstyles and manners of dressing; it truly shows an appreciation for the character's culture. Although some of the rhymes seem a bit forced, the overall narrative, text, and illustrations make this an excellent addition to library collections.

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This is a rather text-heavy picture book about a little girl who wants to keep her cousins from quarrelling at Mummy's party.

The rhyming text is okay with decent meter for the most part (although you may have to read some lines a few times to get the timing down if you're reading it aloud). The story, however, was just so-so for me. Ella is worried about keeping Taye and Jade from arguing. So she talks to her mother, who tells her that Great Grandad Frank once played a prank to get his kids to stop quarrelling. Ella resolves to ask him, and she does. The problem is that Great Grandad Frank never actually tells the story, and the book ends with Ella wanting to come up with another plan to find out about the prank. Perhaps because her own prank (that she came up with herself) was successful at getting Taye and Jade to stop arguing, Great Grandad Frank's story was deemed unnecessary. But I found that omission kind of unsatisfying, and a bit of an unfair tease.

The pictures are cute, especially when Ella plays her prank with all the kids. At the back, there's a spread showing all the characters in the extended family, clearly labelled with their names. Judging by the name of the publishing company on this one, I'm guessing that these characters are based on real people.

Overall, this isn't bad, but it's a bit long for reading aloud. Some readers will probably also be frustrated by not finding out about Great Grandad Frank's prank. I know I was.

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A very long and superbly sustained poem for the young reader, but that's not the whole story about this book. On the plus side it shows family life with everyone a person of colour, and that a young girl can win the day when two permanently bickering cousins she fears are going to upset her mother's birthday party get bested. But at the same time – production-wise, the font might be small for the intended audience this is pitched at; poetically thinking we get a lot of the couplets' endings repeated, meaning fewer original rhymes are actually on the pages; and narratively, the whole thing goes off on a tangent for no reason with the girl's older relative's anecdote going nowhere, and her 'solution' to her problem is really on the pathetic side. Two and a half stars for this – it's worth sharing, but will probably be forgotten about before it's back at the library.

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