The Lavender Blue Dress by Aidan Moffat and Emmeline Pidgen (Cargo Publishing)

Now and again we're reminded of how powerful children's books can be for imparting wise messages. In "The Lavender Blue Dress" there's a whomping great big heartfelt message in the story of Mabel, a little girl who has all the same hopes, dreams and aspirations as other little girls. Mabel, however, comes from a poor family so as other little girls at her school are dreaming of amazing gowns and outfits for the Christmas Ball, Mabel knows that her own wardrobe only contains shabby moth-eaten dresses.

The date approaches and though Mabel dreams of the perfect lavender blue dress, a blue so bright and gorgeous that it would shine out amongst the rest, she knows deep down in her heart that her family would never be able to afford a new outfit.

But her family are special and have something worth far more than money, something that might just mean that Mabel gets to go to the Christmas Ball after all...

Charlotte really loved this story, that has a little dash of Cinderella and a jot of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" threaded into its touching story. We truly loved Emmeline Pidgen's utterly perfect artwork too, which suits the story so well. There's a story CD tucked into the back of the book as well, which is delightful (though be extremely careful extracting it from its sleeve, it's well and truly stuck on and not easy to detach from the book without damaging it.

To that end, the book's lovely slip cover has a cut out and dress Mabel - But we couldn't bring ourselves to chop a book sleeve apart like that, it's just not the ReadItDaddy way :)

Curl up with this gorgeous slightly christmassy classic, it's absolutely bound to melt your heart.

Charlotte's best bit: Mabel's big reveal! Such a lovely moment in the story

Daddy's Favourite bit: A touching and heartfelt message in a gloriously presented book, utterly superb!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Cargo Publishing)