Sloth Slept On by Frann Preston-Gannon (Pavilion Books)

Sleepy snoozy sloths. It's amazing how an animal that can spend up to 20 hours a day snoozing can be such an appealing character for a book. We already know Frann Preston-Gannon has a gift for writing awesome dinosaur stories (we've loved her Dinosaur Farm books) and we also loved the racey chase around the world in "How to Lose a Lemur" - But can Frann make a simple sloth loveable too?

The answer is (of course) yes and Sloth is discovered by a group of kids hanging from their tree fast asleep one day. The children have never seen a sloth before so try to figure out what he is, where he comes from and what he might like to eat.

The tiniest tot finds a picture of the sloth in a book, and soon learns all about him - while her older siblings are still trying to work out if it's a space creature or perhaps something from the briny deep.

Eventually tiny tot is listened to, and they hatch a plan to help poor Sloth get back to where he belongs.

There is a twist, we won't try to spoil it too much for you but it's tons of fun and you'll get to learn lots of fascinating facts about our sleepy friends in the process. In Frann's brilliant storytelling and illustrative style we fell completely in love with Sloth and giggled like goons as he delivers his killer line right at the end of the book. As an aside it's quite some trick to give a sloth its own character (after all, they do spend an awful lot of time snoozing) but Frann pulls it off with aplomb (we just love his expression when he does finally wake up!)

Utterly awesome stuff!

Charlotte's best bit: We don't want to spoil the end but that last double page spread is an absolute cracker!

Daddy's Favourite bit: Not difficult to see why Frann garnered a Sendak fellowship, she absolutely ROCKS!

(Kindly sent to us by Pavilion Books)