I have a real soft spot for beautifully designed and illustrated games and puzzles. When my children were little we bought a lot of Djeco games in France for this reason, as they often used picturebook illustrators to illustrate their products (Benjamin Chaud and Marc Boutavant to mention a few) and I was really pleased to …
Bears Don’t Read! Emma Chichester Clark (HarperCollins Children’s Books) The story of George the Bear who discovers there is more to life than doing usual bear things after finding a book in the forest, this a wonderful tale of how life-changing learning to read can be. Teamed with Emma Chichester Clark’s glorious artwork, which adorned with …
Kazuno Kohora (Macmillan Children’s Books) While everyone else is fast asleep, a very special library opens its doors to animals who come from all over town to visit it and read books there. Staffed by a little librarian and her three assistant owls, together they try to find the perfect read for each and every one of their …
Helen Docherty (text) & Thomas Docherty (illustrations) (Alison Green Books) In every house, in every bed, A bedtime book was being read … But suddenly the story books begin to disappear. There might just be a book thief on the loose! Eliza Browne is keen to solve the mystery and hatches a plan to catch …
Nick Bromley (text) & Nicola O’Byrne (illustrations) (Nosy Crow) If you think you are settling down for a lovely quiet storytime reading The Ugly Duckling, think again. The book and its tale has been invaded by a crocodile and he is not very happy about being stuck inside! It is up to reader and the little cygnet …
Pippa Goodhart (text) & Nick Sharratt (illustrations)(Doubleday) Just imagine that you could travel through time or that you could be any animal you wish to be, or that you could be really big, or indeed very small! What would you be, what would you do, where would you go? With an huge array of choices, this new …
Marnie Edwards (text) & Leigh Hodgkinson (illustrations)(Nosy Crow) Princess Sapphire and Emerald the Witch, who live in Mixtopia, a land where everything is a little bit topsy–turvy. In this first adventure, the two friends are invited to a wedding party in Fairyland. After deciding upon their gladrags, the girls are on their way, it looks …
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 …
Anna Dale(Bloomsbury Children’s Books) Hardbattle Books is no ordinary bookshop. Years ago, Magic decided to make it its home and has been creating havoc there ever since. Mr Hardbattle, the owner, has learnt to live with it, but unfortunately it has driven away most of his customers. When Mr Hardbattle gets a letter from the new …
Chae Strathie (text) & Emily Golden (illustrations) (Scholastic) The Loon, a creature which ressembles a mad-looking blue rabbit, lives on the moon and every night he collects children’s dreams which he then uses as “dream steam” to power the engines that light the lightbulbs that make the moon glow! But one evening he zooms down to Earth only …
