This is a Mini Book Review for Ozzie and Mack by Trish Holland, illustrated by Dan Krall for the LeapFrog Tag Reading System. Check out my review for LeapFrog Tag Reading System here.

Ozzie and Mack was the book that was included with the Tag Reading System and is presumably geared to give an overall impression of the capabilities of the system, so it was the first book that my 4-year-old son Caleb and I tried out. The 25-page book tells the story of how Ozzie Otter broke school rules and brought his pet grasshopper, Mack, into the classroom.  Unfortunately, Mack gets out of hand, resulting in the complete disruption of the classroom and raising the ire of Ozzie’s teacher, Mrs. Bunny. Can Ozzie come up with a plan to make everyone happy?

The book is nicely read by the Tag and has the appropriate sound effects to highlight the action of the story.  Each page illustrated and clicking the images with the Tag results in fun surprises.

At the beginning of the story, Ozzie invites the child to join their Tree House Club and gives the child his Nickname.  Caleb was Cool Wolverine while I was Groovy Wolverine.  As we played the games, the Tag would congratulate Caleb on his successes, ie “Congratulations Cool Wolverine!”  Every few pages, there was a game to test the child on reading and comprehension.  At the end, there were various games with 3 levels of difficulty to introduce the child to rhyming words, the actions of the silent “E” and simple reading.

Caleb liked how this book introduced the Tag Reading System to him, so he’s giving it 10 stars out of a possible 10.  I found this book adequate for exploring the possibilities of the Tag so I’m giving it 6 Dancing Elephants out of 8.  I can’t wait to try out some of the other books in the Tag Library.