Have you Ever, Ever, Ever by Colin McNaughton and Emma Chichester-Clarke (Walker Books)

We have three recommendations for you before you dive into this fabulous book:

1) Don't start reading it while eating a mouthful of Cream Crackers!
2) Make sure you have your best dancing trousers on, you will not be able to sit still while reading it!
3) Try some tongue-loosening exercises before you begin. You will need them!

"Have you Ever, Ever, Ever" is a book that celebrates the very reason we are here writing this blog. We love stories, we love brilliant characters and we absolutely love our libraries, so it's fantastic to see something that so deliciously pays homage to those things in such an original and inventive way.

The sing-song verse plays with traditional nursery rhyme and story characters to ask a child whether they've heard of the wildest and whackiest things. A piper picking pickled peppers? A diddle diddle cat with his fiddle? Surely there's no such thing and no place you could find all these crazy characters gathered together under one roof. Or is there?

Emma's illustrations are full of energy to accompany the jolly and bouncy verses (as usual, Charlotte politely told me that "she was" the lovely fiddle-cat's wife - she always picks a character in a book to adopt!)

Great fun and it's really not hard to see why this book won Emma a nomination for the Kate Greenaway Award Longlist. Fantastico!

Charlotte's best bit: The fiddle diddle cat and his fiddle-diddle wife

Daddy's favourite bit: A glorious celebration of our rich storytelling heritage and our utterly fantastic library services, and of course our super-talented authors and illustrators too!