Scruffy Bear and the Lost Ball by Chris Wormwell (Jonathan Cape Publishing)

Chris Wormwell is the genius behind one of our favourite children's books, the divine "Eric!" and so we couldn't wait to dive into 'Scruffy Bear and the Lost Ball'.

Chris has a knack of imbuing his animal characters with a brilliant range of emotions and facial expressions. Scruffy Bear and his friends are wonderfully drawn and soon you're wrapped up in the story of the (rather mischievous) Scruffy Bear and what happens one day when a big red ball unexpectedly drops on him, seemingly from nowhere.

Being a bit of a naughty little chap, Scruffy Bear does what pretty much any of us would do. He toe-punts the ball as hard as possible, unfortunately getting it stuck in a tree.

Momentarily, the red ball's real owners turn up and wonder where it has disappeared to. Scruffy Bear doesn't own up but at least helpfully offers to retrieve the ball from the tree for his rabbity pals.

We loved the fact that as Scruffy Bear begins to ascend the tree, each turn of the page builds up tons of tension till the surprise on the next page (absolutely brilliant for making Charlotte jump! Am I rotten, hehe!)

We'll let you discover what happens in "Scruffy Bear and the Lost Ball" yourself. It's a brilliant book packed full of adventure and surprises with some of the nicest artwork around.

Charlotte's best bit: Don't want to spoil the surprises, so we'll just say if you read this the right way it's great for making children jump :)

Daddy's favourite bit: Scruffy Bear and his friends are so beautifully painted in a nice update of the winnie the pooh / beatrix potter art style. Superb.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Jonathan Cape Publishing)