I’ll happily admit that I go on about Bookstart a lot. I talked about it a little bit here, when the government first announced they were cutting the funding to Booktrust’s bookgifting schemes.Bookstart is 20 years old this year, having been first established in 1992, though it did not become a national scheme until roughly 2000. You can …
Library Mice Family Favourite
PICTURE BOOK CAROUSEL: The Saga of Knuffle Bunny
Mo Willems (Walker Books) I didn’t discover Mo Willems via his famous Pigeon books. My first encounter with his work was the first Knuffle Bunny book, Knuffle Bunny: a Cautionary Tale , and was bowled over by the fantastically imaginative use of pastel coloured illustrations superimposed with sepia photographs of Brooklyn. The result is so drastically …
"Press Here" Blog Tour
Hervé Tullet translated by Christopher Franceschelli (Chronicle Books) A yellow dot. An invitation to press on it. Then turn the page, see what happens: two yellow dots! Press again, ta-dah: three dots! What happens if you poke, blow on or even tip the book on its side? Press Here is a masterpiece of simplicity, bringing interactivity in picture books to …
Rhino? What Rhino?
Caryl Hart (text) & Sarah Horne (illustrations)(Hodder Children’s Books) Rhino lives at the zoo and is rather bored and lonely so he decides to squeeze through the bars and sneak out unnoticed. He soon finds shelter in a nearby farm, but straight away, and unbeknown to him, he manages to create absolute chaos. The farm animals, who …
Rapunzel Week (3): Falling for Rapunzel
Leah Wilcox (text) & Lydia Monks (illustrations)(Puffin) Once upon a bad hair day, a prince rode up Rapunzel’s way.“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, throw down your hair!”She thought he said, “Your underwear” If you are looking for a humorous take on the traditional fairy-tale, this one is definitely the one for you. Hard-of-hearing Rapunzel becomes increasingly confused when …
Library Mice Family Favourites
We all know what the classics are in children’s literature (athough there might be some discussion as to whether certain titles should be included, or not!) and within those classics each of us will have their favourites. But each family, especially, I think, one with children, have their own classics, their own favourites, those that mean something, those that …