The Very Noisy House by Julie Rhodes and Korky Paul (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)

Now that Charlotte takes an even more active role in our book reading sessions, it's always great to find books that she can easily read along with me and join in with - particularly big noisy books like "The Very Noisy House".

Stories that build from a very simple beginning into a chaotic crazy explosion of words and pictures are always favourites on the blog. Here, the simple story of a little old lady who lives at the bottom of the house and clonks along with her walking stick expands as the dog upstairs is disturbed by her clonking, the cat above the dog is disturbed by the dog's barking, the baby above is disturbed by the cat's meowing and the birds in the attic start flapping madly as the cat's meows get louder and louder. As each level of the house is revealed, the story progresses and the barks, clonks, meows, waahs and flapping get louder and louder until they explode into a cacophonic crescendo.

We loved the fact that the story echoes like a soundwave, getting louder and louder, and then eventually once again getting softer and softer until it bounces back on itself - giving you the perfect excuse to zip straight back to the first page.

A great story, and it goes without saying that Korky Paul's illustrations (including a cameo from everyone's favourite witch, Winnie) really make the book come to life. Probably a good idea to get yourself some earplugs for this one if you have more than one child and they're both helping out with reading duties!

Charlotte's best bit: Wonderful cameos from Winnie the Witch, and the Waaah-ing baby!

Daddy's Favourite bit: A wonderful book that reads like an echo-reverberation wall of sound. Superb!