Our Current 5 Favourite Books for Young Children

We got a few new books over the summer and some of them are pretty good for young children. Here are our top 5 recommendations:

The Bunny That Couldn't Be Found by Angela Mitchell

We love this one - it's a follow up to the book 'The Jelly That Wouldn't Wobble' with Princess Lolly as the main character. In this book she loses her precious 'Johnny Bunny' who rather than being a rabbit as you would presume, is actually a dog. The guards search the palace for her prized pet (a rabbit, or so they think!), all the while staring the puzzled dog in the face. Why are they calling his name but then ignoring him, he thinks? I love the illustration and the dog is the star of this book, with fabulous expressions on his face throughout.  

The Pet Itch by Elli Woollard

This is a bit of a silly one, but the kids love it. Mossy the Monster wants a pet Itch (no I have no idea what one of those is either!) and him and his sister concoct a way to get their family to let them have one. It is a proper story of how siblings gang up on and scheme against their family. Hmmm, who does that remind me of?

Things You Never Knew About Dinosaurs by Giles Paley-Phillips

We got given this book in our Britmums goodie bag and it's a good'un. The way it flows when you read it rather reminds me of Aliens in Underpants, which is one of our favourites too. We love Gile's books, they all have a small element of terror in them, this one is rather deceptive as I didn't think there was anything remotely scary in it until the last page. And just to say - it's not scary, scary, if you know what I mean. It's funny scary! 

A Royal Fairytale published by Egmont and based on the original storybook app by Ink Robin

I'd never heard of the app, so when we were given this book, also in our Britmums goody bag, I was new to it. I hadn't realised that there were children's books about the royal couple, but doh, of course there are - they are big news and products related to them sell well! It's a sweet book about Kate and William from childhood to meeting each other to getting married and having a baby. Prince George hadn't even been born yet when we first started reading this, so it's nice that the modern fairytale is now complete. I really love the illustrations, particularly the page with Westminster Abbey and it captures well the excitement of the nation over the royal wedding.

The Lonely Beast by Chris Judge - Me Books App on iOS

This one is great, it's on the iPad using the Me Books App (if you haven't got this app then GET IT) and both kids love it. The Lonely Beast is very rare (only 1 in every country of the world) and so feels alone. He sets off on a round the world trip over seas and mountains to find another beast. Our favourite bit is when he goes under the sea and gets his foot stuck in a clam. The artwork is gorgeous and the story is quirky. But the best bit about getting this book from Me Books is the voicing of the characters in the book - the beast has a great voice and the humour of the book is conveyed so well because of this. Check it out to see if the beast finds a friend.

We were sent/ given these books to review - all opinions are our own

Book Reviews - The Fearsome Beastie & Tamara Small and the Monsters' Ball

Isla was sent some new books recently. They came around the same time as she'd just got into having stories from the iPad so I was interested to see what would happen - would she shun the books? I wasn't sure. I hoped not as I personally am a big fan of REAL books! I'm not yet converted to Kindles and ibooks. In the case of children's books, I love a beautifully illustrated REAL physical book, where you can really pore over the pages. That's not to say I won't be converted at some point.....

When I told her she had new books she was hyped. Both her and Noah love stories at bedtime. The first night she wanted to read Tamara Small and The Monsters' Ball by Giles Paley Phillips. I didn't know what to expect and as I started to read it dawned on me, was this a good idea to read about monsters at bedtime? Well I needn't have worried as we soon find out that these are fun loving monsters! The build up before we find out they're friendly monsters is good though and Isla was all snuggled up into me until I felt her physically relax when the pictures showed Tamara having fun with the ghosts, vampires and witches!

The book is written in a rhyming style which makes the story flow really well and I find it also helps children to remember large chunks of the story, particularly good for pre-schoolers who can't read just yet. The illustrations are good, the ghosts and ghouls particularly well done. Isla really likes the skeleton and asks what it is, as she doesn't quite understand our bodies are made up of bones! 

Next up was The Fearsome Beastie also by Giles Paley Phillips. I really liked this book, but my mum had concerns that it was a bit scary for bedtime. Thinking about it now, it is different to Tamara Small, the suspense and the fear are held for longer in this book. That said Isla didn't seem overly scared by it - she thought it was like Little Red Riding Hood. And it is really, a fearsome beastie comes to town in search of children to eat! He soon meets his match when the Grannie finds him, chops him up and makes beastie stew for all the children to eat!

I liked this book particularly as it gets back to old style fairy tales. It is reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood as we have the people getting eaten and then someone comes to save them. In this case the story becomes funny, it's no boring woodcutter that saves them it's a little grey haired old lady! Giles Paley-Phillips cites Roald Dahl among his influences and I totally get that. The humour coupled with a gruesome tale is exactly what Dahl did best and I see it in these books too. 

With both these books I liked getting away from the 'princess' stories that we've had to read of late (all that pink and slushy love stuff!). Also I am happy to report that REAL books still have a place in our house, Isla hasn't ditched them in favour of the iPad.


Both books can be purchased from Amazon and they would make incredibly good Christmas Stocking fillers!
 
Tamara Small and the Monsters' Ball - Giles Paley-Phillips
The Fearsome Beastie - Giles Paley-Phillips


We were sent these books free of charge to review, all opinions are my own.

Excellent Books for 3 year olds!

Well as you know it was Isla's birthday recently and I took this opportunity to stock her up with a few new books, so I thought I'd give a couple a mention here as we're really enjoying reading something new at bedtime. Incidentally Noah is already showing a love of books too and is enjoying some of Isla's old ones!

The first book I bought for Isla was Good Little Wolf by Nadia Shireen. I love reading this one as the story has a fab twist at the end and also I love the illustrations. Rolf is a Good Little Wolf and he doesn't fit to the stereotype of 'big bad wolf'. On meeting a real Big Bad Wolf he tries to conform but he can't and it's a bit of an error.... I never tire of reading this at bedtime and I love that you have to interpret it yourself - there is no doubt what has happened on the last page of the story but it's not spelt out and so Isla is not quite sure where Mrs Boggins and Rolf have gone.

We had a few Oliver Jeffers books already (Stuck and Lost and Found) and so I took the opportunity to also buy How to Catch a Star. I love Lost and Found and I love this one just as much. I think Isla likes this one a bit more as she finds Lost and Found a bit sad. Her favourite bit is when the boy goes to lots of lengths to catch a star and on explaining to a seagull the seagull doesn't want to help at all. I like the way that the boy's matter of a fact approach to catching a star is described - the way his imaginative attempts at capturing it are made to sound so possible.

Another new book was Peppa Meets the Queen. I know that this isn't exactly going to make the children's classics list but Isla is a MASSIVE Peppa Fan so I couldn't very well not buy her a Peppa book and as we missed the special Jubilee episode I thought this would be a great consolation and it is! The story is very simple Miss Rabbit wins an award for being the most hardworking person in the country which of course she is. This means that Miss Rabbit and all the children get to go and collect the award from The Queen. It's a really fun book who would have thought that the Queen likes jumping up and down in muddy puddles?

The final new book was a gift from one of Isla's friends, The Tickle Book is her absolute favourite at the moment, she gets two books at bedtime these days and this one has been one of the two for 3 weeks now! It's a pop up book, with lots a flaps to lift and things to pull to reveal the Ticklemonster. The illustrations are by Axel Scheffler of The Gruffalo fame - so it is fun to look at - there are loads of things going on in the scenes on each page, so we talk about what's going on. The only thing I would say is that it does need supervision when reading as the moving parts in it can get ripped with boisterous use!

We really do recommend all these books. What books go down well in your household at bedtime? I'd love to know, it's always good to find out some corking good reads!

Listography - Books and Babies

Ever since Isla was very little I have always read to her, reading is one of my favourite past times and I very much hope that she follows in my foot steps. I've blogged about the importance of reading on my Library  post recently. Reading really does fire up the imagination and I loved becoming immersed in a book especially on winter days. I grew up in the 80's, in the days when TVs in kids bedrooms started becoming popular, but I just didn't want one! I was happy listening to tapes (!) and reading books - does that make me a geek?!

The following 3 books are regularly thumbed in our house, and we never tire of them!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

We love this book, Isla has had it read to her millions of times practically since birth! The colours are beautiful and when she was really little she just loved putting her fingers in all the holes that the caterpillar made in the food. I like to get her to point out all the things that she recognises - the cakes on the last day of the caterpillars gorge-fest are her current favourite!

Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell

A really nice lift the flap book that helps babies to recognise animals and it gives me the chance to ad-lib and do all the animal noises. Isla's favourite of my animal impressions is when I pretend to spit like a camel! OK, not very ladylike but it gets a laugh every time!!

Spot's Noisy Night by Eric Hill

Spot goes camping with his friends and they have a very disturbed night what with owl's 'twowittwowooing' and frogs leaping around the tent! This one is so fun and brilliant because throughout the story there are sounds to play and for each of the sounds is a puzzle piece that your child can fit into the pages. This is such a great interactive book and is the latest in a line of Spot books that we own.



The next two books are obviously a bit too advanced for Isla right now, but they are two favourites of mine from when I was a child and I really hope she takes to them like I did. When I was at primary school I had to write book reviews of all the books I read and I've still got the folder up in Mum and Dad's loft! I read so much, I was a book worm, so choosing just these two was a struggle because I could have gone for Ramona and Beezus or Pippi Longstocking and actually all Roald Dahl books hold a special place in my book loving heart, so it was hard to pick one of his.

The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton

This series of books by Enid Blyton are just pure fantasy. I loved Moonface and Silky the fairy. Through the Faraway Tree they showed us magical lands and all manner of creatures. My favourite of all the lands is 'The Land of Take What You Want'
where, as the name suggests, you can take whatever you want for free!


Thinking about this book has made me feel all nostalgic about the Enid Blyton books I used to own, they all had hard covers and the pages felt so good (does that sound weird!?).


I'd love for Isla to get lost in these books imagining that she is visiting all these wonderful places. They are so escapist and can really help you forget about the real world...

The Twits by Roald Dahl

This is one of my favourite Roald Dahl books (along with The Witches, Georges Marvellous Medicine...). The descriptions of Mr and Mrs Twit are fantastic and I always loved how Mr Twit was just so extra disgusting with food in his beard and you could almost smell how unclean they were from the descriptions. They hate children and they torment animals but as is the case in all Roald Dahl's books the mean characters always get their come uppance!

Roald Dahl's books also have the extra benefit that they have gorgeous illustrations by Quentin Blake - something I have blogged about previously here.

One of my things I want to do at some time in the future is go to the Roald Dahl museum, something to save for when Isla is older.

This post is part of the Listography Linky that Kate Takes 5 runs every week. Pop over to her blog to see her book suggestions and also a whole host of others!

The Library

Once you've been home from hospital for a couple of weeks with your new baby and your partner has finished paternity leave, the best thing you can do is to get yourself and baby out and about. I realised this after about 3 weeks and found that the days where i had no plans were the ones where i got the most stressed and fed up. It's hard when you're a new mum and it's not always the 24 hour 'love-in' with your baby that you think it will be, sometimes you can really feel isolated and wonder where your own identity has gone.

In the early days with Isla I would spend lots of time with my best friend and her little boy and also my new NCT friends who were really good at setting up weekly get togethers. Some mornings after a rough night of no sleep I'd really not feel up to leaving the house but I knew that once I'd closed the front door behind me and started my trip out I would feel better. I'd also have the fear of her crying when we were out. I think this is a common fear, we're worried about how other people see us dealing with our new baby.

Once I was a bit more confident with Isla I started looking into places to take her for play and stimulation (and a chinwag and cuppa for me!), as I realised we needed to do a bit more than just take a weekly walk to the see the health visitor! One of the things I loved doing was going Rhyme Time at the local library. It's basically a half hour nursery rhyme sing song. The first time we went she was only about 8 weeks old and spent the entire 30 mins snoozing, while I probably looked like a zombie singing The Wheels on the Bus. As the weeks went by though, she usually stayed awake for it and loved looking at all the slightly older babies and children and defintely loved the songs involving being lifted up in the air and swung around. A trip to the coffee shop would usually follow whereby the smallest coffee shop in my town would house up to 20 mums, babies and buggies, all huddling over 1 cup of coffee each and all asking for our bottles to be warmed up! It was so nice to be out of the house, looking at the four walls could really get me down, especially as the housework had taken a nosedive and our house was a sh1thole!!

The other good thing about the library is it's where you can collect your baby's 'Bookstart' bag. Bookstart is a national programme that encourages parents to enjoy books with their children from an early age. The best thing about the bag is it contains 2 board books. We love reading to Isla and she's always had bedtime stories since we started a bedtime routine at 3 months. She now knows when we're asking her to fetch particular books and can point out things within the books and name them. Her books of choice are 'Spot', 'In The Night Garden' and 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. 

We try to go to the library at least once a month now, either for Rhyme Time, where she interacts a bit more these days and imitates us singing the songs (Row, Row, Row and Baa Baa being her favourites) or just to let her roam around and look at the books. I know not all local libraries are that warm and welcoming but it's worth checking out if yours has mummy and baby sessions as it can be a really great way of meeting other people and sharing fun times with your little one!