A quick, cute picture book that details a day of golf for the gophers. What mishaps will they engage in throughout their golfing journey?! Check out this book to find out!

REVIEW UPDATE: My 3 Year-old-grandson absolutely loved this book! He made an adorable story to go along with it. I stand corrected.

I am a big fan of BooksGoSocial books and usually find each one entertaining and educational. However, this book does not meet their usual standards. It is a picture book about gophers golfing. While must could be done on this topic (think Caddyshack), the story here is definitely lost in transition. It is a picture only book which would be fine except that the story itself is hard to follow. The illustrations are cute but the gophers can be confused and what they are doing is often perplexing. I am going to show it to my four year old grandson who loves to make up stories. If he enjoys it, I will edit my review.


I received an ARC from BooksGoSocial through NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book. I am voluntarily submitting this review and am under no obligation to do so.

I loved the concept of having children use their own words and interpretation of the pictures to tell the story. As an adult I felt the pictures / story to be quite ambiguous, but the 2 children I shared the ebook with had no such reservations and described each of the beautifully illustrated pictures to tell something resembling a story!

I felt this book to be appropriate for children in the early years - maybe age 4+

My thanks to Net Galley, author / illustrator and publisher for the opportunity ti review this book in exchange for an advance copy.

This was so cute and it made me giggle. The pictures were simple and told the story well. I like that it showed kids that you can communicate in other ways besides using words. I also loved that this easily allows children to tell their own story to go along with the illustrations. Each kid can take their turn with the book and get something a little different each time. This is excellent to foster creativity. I loved it!

Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for this digital ARC for my honest review.

#GopherGolf #NetGalley

This book is so precious! I love the idea of a wordless book. This book is invaluable to helping kids who are intimated by books due to reading difficulties. We can help them write their own words for the story. It will benefit their creativity greatly to have more books like this one. The illustrations are perfect! I loved the incorporation of the bird, fish and squirrel. This book also proves an important lesson of playing a sport to just enjoy it. The gophers’ shots weren’t perfect, but they were having so much fun. Perfect book for kids. I would even use this book as a gift for adults who like golf. I can see them laughing and enjoying like they were a kid again.

We enjoyed this one! A lovely picture book that tells a fun, delightful story with no words whatsoever. Lovely illustrations that have plenty of personality make it easy to work out just what's going on, and we had smiles on our faces as we followed (and told, in our own heads and to each other, rather than reading from the page) the adventures of a couple of playful gophers.

Gopher Golf was a great way to approach bedtime. My four year old loved making up her own story from the pictures and there were some loud squeals of laughter when the squirrel showed up! As a teacher I think that this format, that really teaches kids to predict stories and thought-map vocabulary, is excellent practice for pre-readers.

A Special thank you to BooksGoSocial and Netgalley for the ARC.

This is a delightful picture book. Two gophers decide to go golfing and much excitement ensues.
The pictures are so much fun and wonderfully drawn, showing so much expression on the gophers and other characters' faces. You cannot help but smile on the very first page. Even without telling a story aloud, there is so much story here. But my kids had a ton of fun coming up with a story to go along with the pictures, getting so creative.
This book will have your kids using their imagination and building their storytelling skills in no time. I highly recommend this fun book!

3.5★
“A wordless picture book.”

This is a great idea for stimulating children’s imaginations. I imagine I’d give it to kids to go through on their own and then maybe start from the beginning and look at it with them. I’ll include a handful of illustrations in the order they appear in the book, so you can get an idea of the flow.

In my Goodreads review there are three illustrations here.

We see a bird intercept a ball and place it in a nest full of eggs.

In my Goodreads review, there is an illustration of the bird putting the ball in the nest.

We see the gophers up in the tree, hitting the ball from the nest (with eggs at risk). I’ve never seen a gopher up a tree that I know of, but that alone could spark a conversation.

Later, a ball seems to land in a tree where there is a squirrel (I *think* it is a squirrel). A gopher lines up on an acorn instead of a ball, as the two of them kill themselves with laughter.

In my Goodreads review, there is an illustration of the gophers laughing as one aims at an acorn.

The book does show where their ball went.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
The squirrel with cheeks full of nuts and a golf ball

It also shows their acorn shot landing in a nearby pond.

There is a lot of laughter and humour in this, and I think kids would have fun making up a story and adding dialogue no matter what language they speak or are learning as a second language. This sort of picture book can help them develop vocabulary. Personally, I'd prefer another style of illustration, but that's just me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Books Go Social for the preview copy.

Get ready to laugh!

Gopher Golf takes readers on a wild adventure as two gophers get up to all sorts of mischief while playing golf. This wordless picture book speaks volumes with its engaging illustrations and it stirs the imaginations of readers. It is perfect for classrooms, giving teachers the flexibility to use the book as a springboard for lessons across the curriculum.
A Special thank you to BooksGoSocial and Netgalley for the ARC.

I love this book, I would love to see you do this version and another version with just a few words or a sentence on each page. My son loved it as well!! Thanks for sharing.

I was curious about this book which is the third in a series of picture-only books. I have not read either of the other two, but I suspect these will appeal more to very young children than to anyone older, because to me it made little sense and wasn't really as easy to follow as I'd expected it to be - in the sense of knowing exactly what was going on.

The illustrations were very cute, and I liked the frenetic tone to the images, but there really wasn't a story in the way I'm used to following one. It was more like a middle with no beginning or end. Maybe for little kids this doesn't matter so much, but then I'm forced to ask: if there's essentially no story - or certainly no written story, when why is there an 'author'?!

An illustrator, or artist or however you care to describe Brun, makes sense, but I'm at a lost to see exactly what Beckstrand contributed except in the vaguest of general ideas. And yet he gets first billing over Brun! But that's a pet peeve of mine: I always feel the artist in books - children's books, comic books, whatever, deserves top billing for the work they put in, but the writer always gets that. It just seems wrong to me!

But I digress. I can't commend this as a worthy read not because there is literally nothing to read, but because it was just a shotgun blast of confusion. I've followed and enjoyed word-free books before, so it's not the format or style that turned me off. This one seemed neither a story nor a book, and certainly not a story book.

What an interesting concept!

My son (aged 3) and I enjoyed this book immensely.

We read it together, I read it to him and he read it to me. With a different story each time!

An excellent book to expand children's vocabulary through discussion (and sometimes debate!) around what is happening in each picture. With no set 'rules' we had a range of thoughts and emotions from the Gopher, with many diverging plotlines and funny moments.

Thank you Netgalley for the e-arc.

A fun idea! This book comes without words, no text - but only illustrations which help children to tell their own story, while looking at the pictures. It was my first wordless children's book to find on NetGalley and I want to leave a thank you! to the publisher for providing parents with this opportunity.

I read this book with my three-year-old daughter and she really enjoyed it and as a mum I thought it was great in that she was able to make up her own story and use her imagination – that for me was a massive plus with the book!

We have read it a few times now and been able to create different stories each time we have read it and it has allowed her creative side to shine.

It is 5 stars from me for this one, a great concept and well executed – very highly recommended!

I have not “read” a wordless picture book in quite some time. Gopher Golf is a funny tale with cute illustrations that should lend itself to imaginative storytelling.

I was pleasantly surprised on how much I enjoyed this wordless picture book. The expressions of the illustrations are engaging and funny. Reading with your children will bring out their imagination and encourage your children to think for themselves. Highly recommend.

A Special thank you to BooksGoSocial and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.

Great little book that my daughter loved to make up a story to the pictures - which changed every time we read it!
Cute illustrations :)

Never read a opened ended book like this with my children before. They absolutely loved! They being able to reread the book and change the words. Great for kids of all ages.

What a wonderful wordless book, with great artwork, a funny storyline and lots of little animals to label and describe. I love using wordless books in my speech therapy sessions, and will certainly add this to my collection!
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.