Alpha-Mania Adventures: The Fantastic Floating Feast

by Jennifer Makwana (Contributor), Danielle Van Bakel, Jalisa Henry (Illustrator)

Alpha-Mania Adventures is an innovative five-book series that ignites imagination and gives pre-reading children the foundation to become successful readers in the future. These exciting and colorful stories are the perfect tools to teach pre-reading skills through play. Storytime at home or in the classroom becomes fun and educational.

Each adventure combines the heroic quests of five intrepid kids with phonological awareness and phonics, the first two components necessary to become a good reader.

The Fantastic Floating Feast (Book 3 of 5) practices alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of the initial sound in a series of words. For example, the phrase "marvelous monkeys munch on muffins" is an alliterative phrase because all four words begin with the sound /m/.

The story: In this book, Captain Ray and his band of plucky pirates have returned to Letter Lagoon with treasure, and they invite the Alpha-Maniacs to their ship to celebrate with a fantastic feast! Once on board, the kids quickly determine that their pirate friends no longer speak in rhyme, but rather in alliterative phrases. After much merriment and fabulous food, the gang realizes that the ship has accidentally set sail. The Alpha-Maniacs must help the bumbling pirate crew right their ship and return to Letter Lagoon before nightfall.

Every Alpha-Mania Adventures book includes:
- An introduction to phonological awareness and tips to use the book to its maximum benefit
- An exciting story that will charm young audiences
- A Find the Hidden Objects phonics activity embedded in the illustrations
- Bonus Activities related to phonological awareness, phonics, and/or letter formation
- Easy-to-use guides on Letter Sounds and/or Letter Formation

Join the Alpha-Maniacs on their third of five phonological pirate adventures with The Fantastic Floating Feast!

39 pages, Paperback

Published September 29, 2016

About the author

Jennifer Makwana is a certified teacher at Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space, an educational support company based in Toronto, Canada. Jennifer has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) , a Bachelor of Education, and a diploma in Early Childhood Education. Since 2008, she has instructed and expanded the Alpha-Mania® program at Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space. Jennifer lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another awesome adventure with the Alpha-Maniacs. The peculiar pirates have returned to Letter Lagoon with the treasure that they found with the help of the Alpha's. Now, instead of rhyming however, the pirates are using a lot of word combinations that start with the same sound. The pirates invite the Alpha's onto their ship for a fantastic feast, but trouble arises and the Alpha's help their pirate friends once again.

This is the third book focusing on different elements of phonological awareness. The Fantastic Floating Feast draws children to the practice of alliteration. Alliteration is one of my favorite techniques, so I had a lot of fun reading this aloud. Children are encouraged to listen for the repetitive sounds of first letters that the peculiar pirates speak such as kind kids and terrific treasure. One of my favorite activities was having children come up with their own alliterative pirate name such as Swashbuckling Sammy! The letter finding games in the radiant, rich illustrations are continued throughout this third installment as well as the extra learning activities to practice alliteration and letter formation. Another great book in the series!

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

[Trully Sunee · Rating 5 out of 5]

To get to see so many learning lessons about letters, phonetics, was a pleasure! There were rhyming pirates that needed assistance learning how to be pirates. They got assistance from the Alpha-Maniacs, who assisted them with how to speak like pirates, and continue their nice, free-flowing rhymes.

This interactive book allows the reader to engage in phonetic, grammar, and spelling at in one great series that begins with this book! The Alpha-Maniacs have a nice contrast to each other as well as with the pirates. There is great teamwork to get the pirates back to shore and back across the water to continue their mission. The ending is quite nice as the Alpha-Maniacs wonder what it would be like to try to find a treasure as they overlooked what came upon shore as the wind blew at the end of this great tale! Read all five and they only got better!

[Donna Maguire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a really good concept (along with the others in the series) but I did find the story aimed more at older children and then the more for younger children but the story was good, the pictures were attractive and bright and a really good read overall - 4 stars this series in general is very good and I'd recommend you read all 5 books!

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

So the treasure has been found and the pirates do not rhyme anymore. Why not? It was gimmicky but it was cute. I realize that the point of this book is to teach alliteration, but it could have still be done so with rhyming.

Also, this book feels longer than the others. They all have about the same page count, but this title seems to suffer from the middle book slump.

[ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

My children are too young for what these books were meant for. However, the stories are teaching good morals, and the pictures are bright and colorful, so these make for a great read. (Review for books 1 - 5. Read all of them thanks too the publishers and NetGalley).