The Four Little Pigs by by Kimara Nye and Marcin Bruchnalski (Maverick Publishing)

Tweaking and twisting one of our favourite old children's stories and introducing a friendly(?) Grandma witch, "The Four Little Pigs" sees the civil-engineering piglet trio joined by a little boy who initially tells his grandma that her bedtime stories are "Booooooo-RING!"

I get this sometimes too, you see Charlotte doesn't instantly love every single book we review - Sometimes I have to insist on a read-through but I don't have Granny's magic powers to help me really immerse her in the story.

But in this tale that's exactly what she does to her grandson Tom. He becomes the fourth little pig, complete with snub nose and piggy tail. Tom arrives just in time to help the first little pig thwart the wolf's first attack and thanks to his inner knowledge of the story, he becomes a bit of a hero.

I love the fact that the real message of this tale has a lovely little two-forked celebration of reading aloud to children, and how awesome our grannies are. My Nan (bless her and rest her soul) always used to be able to predict what we were having for school lunch and claimed she was a witch too (and it took us many years to work out that she just used to lean over the fence and talk to our neighbour - who worked in the school kitchens!)

Charlotte's best bit: Tom comes up with a fantastic plan when it looks like the Wolf is going to make like Santa, and steal down the pig's chimney! OWWWWCH!

Daddy's Favourite bit: A neatly told and illustrated version of a well loved children's classic, given a cheeky tweak. Very cool!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Maverick Publishing)

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