100 Bears by Magali Bardos (Flying Eye Books)

It's whacky, it's zany, it's packed to the gills with awesome little details. In fact you could hear us writing that about most of the books that Flying Eye publish. "100 Bears" took us by surprise as we weren't quite sure what to expect. When the book arrived, Charlotte grabbed it with a "Whoop!" of delight and tucked herself away with it, a book she could happily dig straight into and read on her own.

Later on I caught up with her and we re-read the whole thing together.

It's more than just a counting book, it's a madcap chase around a slightly surreal world of bears and hunters. Children can enjoy counting things, exploring numbers but best of all they can soak up the story and the crazy 'cause and effect' antics as the bears charge around.

Magali Bardos' colourful artwork is fab, particularly the patterns and page spreads where something happens and has an effect later on in the book (you'll see what we mean - there's a lot of great little instances of something early-on in the book cropping back up in a later page).

A very cool book, one we'll come back to again and again!

Charlotte's best bit: Look out for the number 86 and 98. Very neat, definitely Charlotte's fave 'link'

Daddy's Favourite bit: I quite like the fact that hunters and bears party down towards the end, just as they should!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Bounce Marketing / Flying Eye Books)