Come to School Too, Blue Kangaroo by Emma Chichester-Clark (HarperCollins Children's Books)

We love following the exploits of her wonderful dog Plum on The Plumdog Blog (if you haven't discovered it yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!) so any new books from Emma Chichester-Clark are always cause for celebration.

We're relative newbs and green around the gills so you'll have to forgive us for never coming across the Blue Kangaroo books before. We are so happy we have now though, as they're fantastic - and in this tale "Come to School Too, Blue Kangaroo" - Kangaroo's owner Lily is off to a new school for the first time.

She decides to take Blue along with her. Blue is very excited about school and all the things there are to do, new faces to meet, and new experiences but Lily is rather worried that blue might be frightened, might get bored, might be too shy to say hello to anyone.

Soon Lily is wrapped up in the busy school day, and Blue rather thoughtfully watches from the windowsill as Lily enjoys painting, playing and (the best bit of any school day) story time.

When hometime comes, Lily is so excited about her day that the unthinkable happens. Poor Blue Kangaroo gets left at school all on his own. But not to worry, Blue is happy because now he'll get to do all the things Lily did during her fantastic school day!

We'll leave the rest for you to discover, but we're absolutely committed to checking out the rest of the Lily and Blue Kangaroo adventures. I loved the way Lily 'spoke' through Blue, expressing her own fears and anxieties about starting school but shifting them onto Blue (who, rather jauntily, wasn't worried about any of those things at all!)

We've seen many 'first day at school' books on the blog but this is by far the best of the bunch. Beautifully drawn (we expect no less from Emma, she rocks!), beautifully told - a really classy book all round. More Blue Kangaroo soon please!

Charlotte's best bit: She loved matching Blue's paintings to the children who were in Lily's class.

Daddy's favourite bit: Blue being very brave about his first day at school.

(Kindly sent to us for review by HarperCollins Children's Books)