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Seeing Beyond the Surface with Aye-Aye Gets Lucky – Review

Seeing beyond the surface of what we see is a great skill children to learn. This allows them to understand and appreciate the world around them. Author and Academy Award nominee, Terri Tatchell is developing a series of books called Endangered & Misunderstood to help children to become aware of some of the creatures on our planet that are are not known to be endangered in a fun way. They asked us if my family would like to see beyond the surface of the aye-aye in the first book of this series Aye-Aye Gets Lucky. We were excited to get to know a bit more about this amazing animal.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Giveaway Prize Bundle.

Seeing Beyond the Surface with Aye-Aye Gets Lucky

Below are the items we received to start to see beyond the surface of this endangered animal:

  • Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Book
  • Small Camp Fire Mug (to go with the tea)
  • Piggy Back Tote
  • Magnet 
  • Note Pad that have 4 types of pages that go with the online activities
  • Bookmark
  • Aye-Aye Choc Mint Tea
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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Bundle of products.

What’s Aye-Aye Gets Lucky about?

Terri Tatchell’s story is about Aye-Aye (a long-fingered lemur) who happens to be a bit of a trickster. He did one prank too many, and fell out of favour with the humans he lived near in Madagascar. A flying fox teaches him that his tricks got him into this situation and that he must find a way to get the humans to love him again. Aye-Aye figures out how to change the human’s minds and they see beyond his exterior and trickster-nature to love him.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Front Cover Book

Seeing why Aye-Aye’s story so important

Deforestation and hunting are two big reasons why the aye-aye is endangered. The lack of trees in their habitat has caused them to become displaced animals by destroying their habitat. Hunting these animals for the pet trade, for food and as trophies has caused for the aye-aye’s numbers to rapidly decrease.

There is also the issue of the aye-aye and its middle finger. The Aye-Aye uses its long middle finger to extract larvae and grubs to eat. Legends say the aye-aye uses it to pierce the hearts of sleeping villagers. This also added to the unpopularity of this animal.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky “Chase” page.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has classified the aye-aye as Endangered on the Red Data List and have a very high risk of extinction in the very near future. Terri Tatchell hopes, with more awareness and books like Aye-Aye Gets Lucky, we can help to increase the aye-aye’s numbers and save its habitat.

Our thoughts about Aye-Aye Gets Lucky

My son is a HUGE animal lover. He really enjoys reading Aye-Aye. He was sad to learn why the villagers became cautious of Aye-Aye’s presence around the village. My son understands that the villagers were upset with Aye-Aye. but it took a bit of discussion to explain why Aye-Aye was no longer welcome and fearful of him. 

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Boy reading Aye-Aye Gets Lucky in a chair.

Aye-Aye meeting with Flying Fox was a favourite part of the book for my little guy. My son likes the flying fox and liked the advice she gave Aye-Aye to solve his problem. My guy also liked the friendship that Aye-Aye and Flying Fox created between each other.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky “Lesson” page.

The illustrations in Aye-Aye are really gorgeous. They helped to really bring the words of the story to life. Many of the images has movement and the colours are beautiful and vivid. These features of the pictures also helped my son understand the words of the page better.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky “Reunion” page.

Additional bits with this book

Along with receiving Aye-Aye to review, we were also given a bevvy of products to help spread awareness about the aye-aye.

The bookmark is a great product to have with this book. It lets us save our spot in Aye-Aye if we need to stop reading. 

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Bookmark.

I love the idea of the postcard. It acts as a way to send someone a message and share awareness of this book series.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Postcard.

My family loves word magnets! Having the Endangered & Misunderstood Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Word Magnets allows us to learn some of the important words and phrases used in this story.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Word Magnets.

The notepad is a great item to have. It allows for children to jot down ideas or to draw some of the friends they discovered in this book.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Notebook.

With ingredients such as rooibos, brittle pieces, chocolate nut pieces, peppermint leaves & natural flavours, Neverland’s Chocolate Mint Rooibos Tea is a great loose leaf tea to sip and enjoy while reading Aye-Aye.

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Aye-Aye Gets Lucky Chocolate Mint Tea.

What goes well with a good cup of tea? A fun mug to sip it in! This campfire mug is made out of steel and is  great to keep memories of this story in your mind. 

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Boy holing Aye-Aye Campfire Mug.

The Piggyback Tote Bag is a fun way to carry items without the use of plastic bags. It is made of natural canvas and cotton for the cord, so it can be cleaned easily and used again and again.

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Endangered & Misunderstood Piggyback Tote Bag.

Learning and seeing beyond the surface of appearances

My son and I really enjoyed reading Aye-Aye Gets Lucky! This story helped us to become aware of why the aye-aye is endangered and to get us seeing beyond the stories told about this amazing animal. The additional items are fun to have and help to let others become interested in the Endangered & Misunderstood series and their cause. This bundle of items would make for an excellent holiday gift idea! We are so happy to learn so much about the aye-aye. This book is a fabulous addition to our home lbrary!

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Seeing Beyond the Surface with Aye-Aye Gets Lucky

Are you excited to learn more about Terri Tatchell and Aye-Aye Gets Lucky? I visited her Endangered & Misunderstood website to discover more! We also are following Osmo on their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube pages!

Disclaimer: I received a book, products, and was generously compensated from Endangered & Misunderstood to write this review. The views I shared are my own.

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Comments

  1. I think all children need to learn about endangered animals I want my grandchildren to. My children always watched the nature channels instead of cartoons.

  2. OKAPI LOVES HIS ZEBRA PANTS looks like a nice story, I had to check out what an okapi is, I’ve not heard of them before.

  3. We love to watch nature channels, I love how concerned my grandkids are about endangered animals, they love to learn and read and want to help in some way! love tolearn more about the Okapi and Aye-Aye

  4. I have learned these animals are hunted for the pet trade, for food and as trophies which has caused the aye-aye’s numbers to rapidly decrease.

  5. Another critically endangered species is the Cross River Gorilla, there is a long list of these poor critically endangered animals.

  6. A critically endangered species is the Javan Rhino, it would be such a shame to lose these species, they need to be better protected from extinction.

  7. The Javan Rhino would be one animal that would be fascinating to learn about. There are so many interesting aspects about this process.

  8. I had never heard of the Aye Aye before! And using the middle finger for grubs!? Poor villagers sure made up some interesting folk tales, why would an aye aye want to pierce hearts!?

  9. Its interesting that the Aye-Aye lives in enclosed ball shaped nests in the crown of tall trees I would like to learn more about the Aye-Aye

  10. We hear a lot about animals like the gorilla that are endangered but not often about the smaller animals which are highlighted in these books. I had never heard of the Aye Aye, Pangolin, Dik Dik, or Okapi before I learned about these books.

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