A favourite of my daughters when they were small. Or perhaps a favourite of mine, as I have a fondness for puns. I think this is David McKee’s first book. It’s the hero’s tale, the journey of self-discovery. A colourless, nameless bird leaves the jungle where all the animals laugh at him and finds useful…
A lovely book for parents to share with a small child. Simple text and simple images, carefully chosen, carefully designed; it’s a vehicle for conveying love and helping a small child to feel welcome in the world and part of it. Buy through Bookshop.org
Published in the USA in 1949 and then out of print for many years, some wise person at Enchanted Lions Books decide to reissue it in 2013. Son of Mr and Mrs Brown, Little Boy Brown is four and a half. He tells his own story of a day out, and how cleverly and with…
Arthur Ransome breaks so many rules – and brilliantly. If you are not a sailor you find the book littered with terms you don’t know, many unexplained, detailed descriptions of estuaries and compass bearings, children who much of the time seem to have little inner life, a title that reveals the whole plot; and yet,…
Nice colours. Jemima Sharpe uses a constrained palette to suggest moonlight beautifully. And Mr Moon is mysterious. He may be a cat, and he may not be. It doesn’t matter. He is an excellent night-time companion. Then he’s wide-awake and adventurous, just the right kind of person to climb through the creepers on the wallpaper…
Here is another morality tale involving fish (see This is Not My Hat). Simply retold and wonderfully illustrated, this one is out of print. I love Warwick Hutton’s work and hope more of his books (he specialised in retelling fairy tales, myths and Bible stories) may be republished. It is such a familiar story that…
Mother and daughter driving home in bucketing rain. What shall we call your new sister who’s coming? That’s all really, and names written on the steamed-up car windows. But there’s something magic that Bob Graham produces out of the completely ordinary business of getting home in the wet. A lay-by, a petrol pump, windscreen wipers…
A book about theft. Little fish steals big fish’s hat and thinks it’s got away with it. We know otherwise. So much depends on the relationship of reader and child. There is that time when a child discovers lying: words do not have to match reality. With a loving reader this book can be a…
Allison Colpoys’ beautifully light illustrations let the text flower and spread its mood across each page. This is a delicate exploration of the friendship between child and grandparent. It moves through the seasons and when the time comes for grandparent to leave this life, it is addressed without any avoidance, but without labouring either. The…
The power of the imagination to create joy or find joy already present, beautifully imagined as visual metaphor and step by step story of Millie’s walk home from school. A simple, powerful idea stylishly and lovingly delivered, with quiet touches of humour all the way. You may be little, you may have an empty purse,…
E.Nesbit is one of the giants. She lifted Victorian children’s books out of a stodgy mire of safety and didacticism and wrote about real children. She created a wonderful authorial voice: as a reader you feel spoken to by someone who understands you and is not trying make you a better person, because she knows…
Oliver Jeffers is the biz! He draws and paints with panache and pizazz. He has a properly idiosyncratic take on the world that makes good sense to children. If you have a penguin to take to the Antarctic, of course you are going to get your rowboat out of the cupboard. And of course, if…
