We do indeed! David Melling's latest Hugless Douglas book went 'on tour' recently, and Charlotte got the chance to meet the huge 8ft tall huggable bear on a very hot summer's day. We also got to meet David Melling too, which was a bonus as he's a local and somehow our paths hadn't...

Bear and Rabbit in "I Want My Hat Back". Both enter, only one leaves... Our #ReadItMD13 Theme Week this week is all about the darker side of children's books. In some ways the aim of the week is to generate a bit of healthy debate on how dark a children's book can be before it is...

A child's curiosity, there's nothing quite like it. Stimulating a child's sense of wonder is a fine thing to do, through whatever talents you have. In "The Man With The Violin" there's a subtle admonishment for parents who are "too busy" to listen to their children, or...

"Oh dear, SOMEONE got out of the wrong side of bed this morning!" You'll hear this phrase uttered quite often at ReadItDaddy Towers. Usually it's Daddy who, after being woken at 5 am on a non-school / work day, might have reason to be a little truculent but it's definitely...

Thanks to Michelle Robinson, we already know what to do if an elephant stands on our foot but mammoths? Oh, they're an entirely different ball game. Like most parents do from time to time, we asked Charlotte what her ideal pet was. No, it's not a Mammoth thankfully,...

"OH NO, NOT PIRATES AGAIN!" said Charlotte as we popped "Ten Little Pirates" out of its padded envelope ready to review. But despite our description of being slightly burned out on piratical adventures we couldn't resist the bouncy almost sing-a-long book. Ten little...

"A Monster Calls" by Patrick Ness. Children's books can be dark but extremely effective conduits to deal with unspoken fears and real-life events.  You may have noticed a tendency on ReadItDaddy to favour books that often feature monsters, and can sometimes be fairly scary for...

We're having a bit of a dog-day here at ReadItDaddy today (it's almost like we planned it this way!) so following our review of Owen Davey's beautiful "Laika the Astronaut" here's another beautiful book featuring a cool canine. Eddie is a little boy who lives high up...

Shaolan Hsueh - the genius behind Chineasy Children have a natural aptitude for learning new languages and as their vocabulary in their own native language progresses, it's the easiest time to introduce them to other languages as they progress through early years development. We've...

"So beautiful - should've sent a poet" - Eleanor Arroway in 'Contact' We're a family of complete space nerds. My wife (the lucky thing) has travelled with her solar scientist dad to the Kennedy Space Centre, and since Charlotte was born she's always been aware of space...

Coming on September 17th from Bloomsbury Publishing, Neil Gaiman's new children's book "Fortunately, The Milk" is going to be spectacularly huge, take our word for it. Here, Neil gives you a tasty lactose-tolerant glimpse into what spurred him to write a children's book celebrating dads (hooray) and letting dads take centre stage in a heroic chase across time and space to grab...

Great papercraft with a surprise on each page? That's what you get with the fantastic "Fish Food" by Andy Mansfield and Lohlein Henning. We initially thought this might be a bit "young" for Charlotte, with a minimal story and a very short page count but kids of any age...

We've seen quite a few children's picture books that deal with the subject of grief and loss. It's a subject that is extremely difficult to get 'right' in a book that has a target audience who need to see a subtle approach, almost an allegorical one perhaps. Larry Phifer's...

In the summertime, we love books on the beach! This time last year we gave you our recommendations for ten brilliant summer or holiday-themed children's picture books. This year as part of our #ReadItMD13 Theme Week celebrating the first week of the long long LONG school summer holidays,...

Now this book is rather special. Not only is it a brilliant story that combines one of our favourite authors with one of our favourite children's book illustrators, it has a fantastic cause at its heart too. You may have spotted the paper dolls cropping up everywhere,...

We sometimes wonder whether Julia Donaldson gets fed up with being inextricably linked to The Gruffalo. Fine book though it is, seeing "By the author of The Gruffalo" on everything Julia does can sometimes grate. For instance here's a new book by Julia and Karen George,...

The Magic Porridge Pot (Level 1 Read It Yourself Range) While children are away from school for the long summer holidays, it's difficult to keep up the impetus with their own reading. We traditionally struggle with Charlotte's reading during holidays (though she's always ready to...

Oh how we love Abigail! Catherine Rayner's book is not only beautiful but it's a lot of fun too. Abigail, the wonderful Giraffe, just LOVES to count. Anyone who loves to count knows how much more fun it can be if you involve everyone else too, so Abigail soon meets all...

Is it possible to have too many pirate-based children's books? Purely looking back over the last year at the sheer amount of pirate-based titles we've looked at (and we've by no means caught them all) you could easily drown in the piratical sea. So it takes something pretty...