ReadItDaddy's Book of the Week - Week Ending 15th May 2015 - "Poppy Pickle" by Emma Yarlett (Templar Publishing)

New Emma Yarlett books are always greeted with a huge ripple of excitement here at ReadItDaddy Towers, and when we first heard about "Poppy Pickle" - a little girl with a HUGE imagination, we couldn't wait to meet her.

Charlotte immediately identified and fell in love with Poppy, an extraordinary little girl in a fairly ordinary family with an ordinary mum, ordinary dad and three ordinary (and hugely cute!) cats.

Whereas most people's imagination levels teeter and totter around toe level, Poppy is filled up to the very BRIM with imagination. She daydreams of wild and crazy things and one day after being sent to her room for letting her exuberance get the better of her, something astonishing happens.

Poppy's imagination comes to life!!

All the things she thinks about pop instantly into existence, and at first this seems like the most amazing and incredibly brilliant thing ever. But when Poppy starts to imagine things like girl eating crocodiles or gigantic hot dogs, the situation soon gets out of hand.

With Mum and Dad stomping up the stairs to find out what all the fuss is about, can Poppy somehow imagine all those imagined objects away? A giant eraser doesn't help, and mum and dad are at the door, EEEEEK!

We knew we'd love this one, after all Charlotte and Poppy are extremely alike (just sitting Charlotte down with a bucket of lego or a sketchpad and coloured pens and letting her let rip with her imagination is a joy to behold). Any book that celebrates the seemingly endless and colourful imagination of a child will always get a huge thumbs up from us, and with Emma's amazing artistic talents and knack for exciting and thoroughly original tales, we just could not resist Poppy Pickle! (Oh and bonus points for managing a sneaky cheeky reference to Michelle Robinson's "How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth" into this story too!)

Charlotte's best bit: The giant hot dog telling the three little pigs that he was "once like them" (I think we both laughed out loud at that bit!)

Daddy's Favourite bit: Emma's imagination is as brilliant as Poppy's. Truly gorgeous illustrations that give Oliver Jeffers a run for his money, brilliant storytelling but best of all a truly inspirational mighty girl hero for little girls like mine to look up to! Awesome!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Templar Publishing)

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