The Cake by Dorothee De Monfried (Gecko Press)

France's most fantastic author-illustrator Dorothee De Monfried is back, and this time she's brought cake! When a tiger has a rumbly tummy, and his friends are hungry too, there's really only one thing for it. It's time to enter the great animal bake-off and bake the most delicious cake.

Dog wants a bone cake. Teddy rather fancies a fish cake. Rabbit wants carrot cake (good choice rabbit, it's my fave too!) and monkey wants banana cake but none of the friends can agree and tiger is such a bossy chap that he insists on chocolate cake.

When it comes to listing the ingredients (silly tiger forgets the chocolate, by the way) things go from bad to worse. In fact tiger gets so grumpy at the suggestion of baking a fish-carrot-bone-banana cake that he loses his temper and threatens to eat everyone instead!

There's only one thing for it...

How do the friends deal with grumpy tiger? You'll get a bit of a clue on the back cover of this book - coming to a bookshelf near you on this very day from Gecko Press (and believe us, it's a very fitting ending that deals quite neatly with bossy choc-cake-obsessed tigers. We truly loved Dorothee's humour and her "Roobarb"-esque wibbly wobbly animal illustrations. A great book that teaches us the value of friendship (and cake) and how to deal with bossy boots!

Charlotte's best bit: When tiger loses his temper and starts roaring. Scary moment!

Daddy's Favourite bit: I think they should've gone with rabbit's suggestion because carrot cake is the very finest cake known to man (or beast)

(Very kindly sent to us for review by Gecko Press)