We have been enjoying this series of books, they are great for new readers with fabulous illustrations, rhyming text & plenty of humour. The stories are short but there are also extras like a glossary, diagrams of Mortimer Keene’s inventions etc which Bryn enjoys.
Bryn gives Alien Abduction 4 & 1/2 stars in his review
We have begun the new year continuing to read christmas stories. Freya’s firm favourites include two Shirley Hughes stories, Alfie’s Christmas (our review) & Angel Mae. Like Alfie’s Christmas Angel Mae is filled with the familiar, the added bonus is singing along to Away in a Manager.
Another favourite is the Fairy Tale Hairdresser & Father Christmas by Abie Longstaff & Lauren Beard.
We discovered these books having won a copy of Fairy Tale Hairdresser & Snow White from the publisher. I had been wary about this series owing to all the pink & glitter, but reading this blog post over on Playing By The Book – Do you avoid “Pink” books? – made me keen to try them and they have proved to be a big hit.
I found the books fun to read & liked spotting restyled fairy tale characters in the pictures. I was particularly impressed to see a sari wearing indian fairy in the story with Sleeping Beauty (yes we are steadily collecting the whole series)
As with the other books Kittie the true heroine of the stories displays her kindness, bravery and intelligence in coming to the rescue when the Snow Queen steals the christmas presents. With Father Christmas, elves, reindeers & even Jack Frost there are plenty of familiar festive characters to add sparkle & christmas magic.
Whenever I read this story Freya is keen to join in and insists we take turns reading each double spread. Previously she has read short stories such as Pip and Posy out loud, using the pictures to tell me whats happening. With this story she is memorising the text & keen to get it all right.
– Freya telling part of the story.
We wrote this for the Guardian Children’s Books Family Reviews
This is a cosy Alfie story about the lead up to Christmas & the magical day itself, shared with family and friends. As always his little sister, Annie Rose, is there to add some mischief to the story.
In Alfies christmas we get to see Alfie’s family and friends following festive tradition such as decorating the tree, wrapping presents & baking biscuits. For me the charm of the story is that many of these scenes could come straight out of one of our family photo albums.
The children always enjoy Alfie stories, Freya’s favourite part is seeing Alfie with his friends from nursery school, I think, like me, she enjoys the familiarity of the scenes illustrated in the book. Bryn on the other hand was keen to note how Alfie’s toy got a christmas stocking filled with gifts & opportunistically decided all his teddies should have a christmas stocking.
A story full of warmth & christmassy sentiment, perfect for this time of year.
We wrote this for the Guardian Children’s Books Family Reviews
This book is often referred to as ‘5 gold rings’ being the line everyone enjoys belting out when singing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’.
It is a beautifully produced book, with its shiny cover, brightly coloured illustrations & cut outs. I particularly liked the illustrations of the little boy & girl guiding you through the carol.
Bryn really appreciated the different elements of the Twelve Days of Christmas peeking through the cut outs as you turn the pages, allowing him to sing his way through the book without having to flick back to pages to remember whether it was ‘swans swimming’ or ‘lords leaping’.
We wrote this for the Guardian Children’s Books Family Reviews
Two brothers start the day in utter excitement having been told by their Mum they’re having a surprise at dinner. They spend the day trying to guess what it could be working themselves into a frenzy and convincing themselves & others it is an exotic holiday to Hawaii.
When they discover what the surprise really is, the older brother is left embarrassed & disappointed. Luckily with the help of his family, especially his younger brother Leo, he is able to laugh about it. A wondrously funny & warm story that appealed to us all.
The children laughed at the ideas from the over excited brothers, like a swimming pool in the back yard they don’t have, and enjoyed the quirky & sometimes surreal illustrations, especially the two headed elephant. A keenly observed story with some close to home truths such as “grown-ups say things they don’t really mean” & holidays spent “watching TV and arguing” had me smiling and appreciating this delightful story.
We wrote this for the Guardian Children’s Book Family Reviews
Winnie the Witch is always popular with Bryn & Freya; they enjoy her mad cap adventures and this book was no exception. Proud of her cardboard robot creation Winnie decides to turn it into a real robot. The real robot turns out to be a big bad robot and chaos ensues when he gets hold of Winnies magic wand.
The illustrations bring this story to life especially when the robot causes havoc turning ducks, frogs, Winnie’s house & even Winnie into robots. The transformation from one picture to the next is as magical as Winnie’s wand.
The mix of magic with familiar activities, such as going to the library, provides a comforting start before the roller coaster adventure begins. A great story to share with the children.
Freya & I wrote this for the Guardian Children’s Books Family Reviews
This book both surprised and delighted us. Bella takes her dog for a walk only to find it disappears off the page. The same fate awaits all who come to help and even Bella herself. Luckily this is the perfect opportunity for the reader to come to the rescue and Freya had great fun lending a helping hand.
This is an inventive book making use of the guttering to make the characters disappear then inviting the reader to give the book a good shake to get everyone out again. Freya was very pleased with herself when she shook the book and turned the page to see all the characters re-appear. I liked the cheeky nature of the book especially the ending.
A perfect smile inducing book.
Bryn’s Review
We are becoming fans of Anushka Ravishankar in this house (review of To Marker, To Market) so jumped at the chance to review her book Captain Coconut illustrated by Priya Sundram. (We were fortunate to get a copy of this book from the publishers to review but all opinions are honest and our own.)
The eponymous hero of the story, Captain Coconut, is a brilliant detective, or so he thinks, and his debut case in this new series of stories involves some missing bananas. Labelled a ‘number mystery’, there are simple sums weaved into this very funny story and plenty of clues – so as in all good detective stories the reader is able to solve the mystery too.
Like all good detectives Captain Coconut has a handy notebook for jotting down the clues, interviews the suspects, checks the facts and (perhaps less typically) even bursts into song. The songs in the book reminded me of my favourite bollywood films being big, catchy, fun and they include a number of costume changes (I now just need to work on the dance routine.)
We have all enjoyed this original book which has a distinctive illustrative style, lyrical prose and humour – but it is Captain Coconut we have all fallen for.
We were fortunate to get a copy of this book from the publishers to review but all opinions are honest and our own.
“The aliens stole them, the dinosaurs fought over then, the pirates got rich from them – whatever will monsters do with underpants?!”
Monsters Love Underpants is the latest in the underpants series and like the preceding books this is just as colourful riotous fun.
We were smiling as soon as we opened the book and we didn’t stop till we closed it, meaning we just had to read it again.
The front & end papers of the book are covered in glorious colourful pants, plenty of choice to pick favourites from.
In Monsters Love Underpants we gets to see all sorts of amazing monsters, wild wooly mountain monsters, spiky spooky space monsters, having fun stealing & wearing their pants.
With it’s fun rhyming text & colourful illustrations a great book to share with my two little monsters.
We had a fabulous weekend at the Cheltenham literature festival. A lovely atmosphere with excited kids keen to hear from their favourite authors & in turn such generous authors & illustrators, taking the time to really listen to the children, answering their questions and putting on entertaining shows.
Bryn & I started the weekend at the Etherington brothers talk who gave great writing tips as well as being hysterically funny & entertaining. So entertaining Bryn fell of his chair laughing. They had tips about genres, characters, settings all the ingredients for a great stories. My favourite analogy was making stories like a of bowlful mixed cereal where every spoonful is a surprise. I wasn’t sure how much Bryn understood but he clearly got the concept ofcreating a world for your story. His creation was conker world, mountains & buildings made of conkers. He went home with the excellent puzzling Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey, which proved to be more preferable than watching Tangled with his sister.
The next day started with Chris Judge who read a couple of his books, drew a robot with direction from the audience & gave a master class on drawing the Lonely Beast. I remember seeing a spread from his latest book Tin months ago, from the design & exquisite colour palette I knew I had to have this book. It was therefore a relief to discover it was the total package beautiful illustration & a fun tale, a favourite in the house from just one reading.
We got our book signed & a highlight for Freya was getting a high five from the author after showing her drawing as well as her robot voice for Tin.
The show that was a hit with the entire family was Michael Rosen. An hour of funny anecdotes and poems,
which we were still chuckling over days later. I remember buying a book of Michael Rosen poems, Mustard, Custard Grumble Belly & Jelly, for Bryn on holiday when he was 3. The CD of poems was requested endlessly for the whole week & he proudly took the book into nursery to share with everyone & recite his favourites.
The day ended with Bryn & I going to see Cressida Cowell talking about how she started writing & all the things that have inspired her. As with all the talks Bryn was transfixed soaking everything in. He was especially pleased when he was picked to ask his question, he asked whether it was the writing or the pictures that came first. Bryn has devoured the How to Train your a dragon series & the excitement of hearing the author speak led to him to spend the long car journey home planning his own series of books. A series involving 100 books about time travelling dragon hunters in space.