Our second Picture Book of the week pulls off the neat trick of instantly feeling like a well-loved children's classic, even though it hasn't been around that long...

It's Book of the Week time! Time for another romp with Simon and his hapless little brother...

To all the parents prepping their kids for going to nursery or 'big school' for the first time, we salute you...!

Here's another awesome slice of time-travelling dino-conservational fun in Abby Howard's latest awesome fact-filled Graphic Novel series...

As the long and gloriously sunny summer continues, we wanted to go all-in for our bumper August Chapter Book Roundup, with a whopping sack full of amazing chapter books for your early reader, middle grade and YA fanatics.

Kicking off with a real waggy tale from Heidi Lang. "Rules of the Ruff" is a perfect summer read for poochy pals who adore all things snuffly, wet nosed and doggy.

Twelve-year-old Jessie is in for a long summer at her aunt and uncle’s house.
A princess and a revolutionary form an unexpected friendship in this charming, illustrated chapter-book series, perfect for fans of Judy Moody and Clementine!

Princess Miranda does not want to go to school. She wants to shoe shop, plan parties, and decorate the castle.
In "Help I'm a Detective" meet Dan, the awkward 'middle child' in his family.  Dan is usually the one everyone ignores and who gets the blame for everything.
Maia believes in magic, and when she meets the star animals, a whole new world awaits, and kicks off a quest to once again defeat the forces of dark magic.
It’s Halloween at Penhallow Hall and while celebrations are in full swing at the stately home, Polly and Rex are in search of a new ghost dog.
The Pet Defenders Code: 1. The safety of Planet Earth depends on you. 2. Humans MUST NOT know the truth. GOOD LUCK – you’ll need it…

Biskit and Mitzy are confronted by a large alien spider who plans to destroy the planet.
Half BEE. Half BOY. Melvin Meadly is . . . BEE BOY and definitely not your ordinary everyday superhero!
When Will accidentally creates a mysterious portal during a trip to the zoo, he's transported into the world of the Night Zoo, and thrust into an incredible adventure. Will is - The Night Zookeeper.

More cute craziness and zaniness now from hit CBeebies show Olobob Top. Let's go drop in on Norbert!

Can there possibly be 100 dogs and dog-related things in this book? Better get your counting head on, we're about to find out...

What is it about kids and peas? If ever there was a veggie villain prevalent through kid's books it's the humble pea...

Love it or hate it, it's almost impossible to ignore Fortnite, one of the biggest videogames of the year...

Here's a slightly humbling and thought-provoking philosophical journey into what really makes us happy and fulfils us...

Summer is ripe with excellent books, hence our need to add this one into our Book of the Week slot because...

This week's second "Book of the Week asks: "What if you could perform a minor miracle, and cram the museum of your dreams between the covers of a gorgeous book?"

Imagine waking up in the morning at 4 AM and instantly thinking to yourself "What can I draw today?"

Now imagine doing that - but doing it in a way where you're actively thinking about how you can share your incredible artistic knowledge with a whole stack of other people, from amateurs (like us) to professional artists looking to add a few tweaks to their game.

Lorenzo Etherington is a dude with a singularity inside his head, capable of drawing in the most incredible ideas through some mystical gravitational force, and translating them into glorious pieces of art - or awesome mind-expanding tutorials.

We've been following his "How to Think when you Draw" series online and in the pages of the fabulous Phoenix Comic for some time. Lorenzo doesn't just teach you how to draw a squirrel, a girl's hair, or a shattered window pane - he takes you through a thinking process that describes what you're trying to draw or visualise using a set of rules that seem so jaw-droppingly simple that they provide an instant confidence boost. "Can it really be that easy?" you start asking yourself - and as you start to scribble and draw some of the exercise topics, you find that the guy knows exactly what he's talking about.

"How to Think When you Draw" is now a hard-backed book available through Lorenzo's recent kickstarter, self published through Hulu. Giving Lorenzo an entirely free rein to produce a piece of work that draws (yeah we'll use that pun a lot) on the very best of the tutes made available previously, with a good few we hadn't seen before.

The book - as you'd expect - is just utterly fantastic, and for us it was really great to have a lot of the tutorials organised by category and available in one place - in a book that we can fold flat and start drawing from. YASSSSSSSS!!!

Follow some of these and you'll start to think before you lift your pencil or pen to paper! It really does work!

Each tutorial section also comes with a vast array of complimentary source material and drawings to help you get up to speed once you've got the gist of what you want to do. Needless to say both C and I absolutely loved all the figurative stuff, particularly drawing gorgeous Stranski-esque ladies.

In our particular level of the kickstarter, this amazing book also came with "The Deluxe Collection Volume 3" - Another huge slice of Lorenzo's personal art back catalogue. 600 pages in fact, blimey guvnor!

A colossal volume comprising 4 years of awesome artistic creativity from an absolute DUDE!

As we've previously said with the last couple of editions of this mighty behemoth of artistic inspiration, the Deluxe Collection III is chock full of amazing ideas, character art, scenic stuff - heck, you name it and it's in here somewhere. In Lorenzo's trademark "Noir-Punk" style, you'll find everything from Stranski girls to kittens driving mechs, stunning Tiki statues or cute little buildings perfect for shoehorning into your favourite RPGs.

Inspiration wise, it's impossible not to flick through this and soak up some of that artistic genius - in fact in conjunction with "How to Think when you Draw" you'll have more than enough source material here to really get your skills up to scratch.

C was so inspired by these that she dug out all our previous Lorenzo books and is now going through them all again, making little doodles and notes as she goes. I love the fact that I'll be off somewhere else in the house and I'll suddenly hear a squeal of delight, the thumping of feet and her appearing at the door to show me some other new little marvel she's discovered in these.

So there you go, a huge thanks to Lorenzo for those early mornings, for the colossal effort involved in producing such a massive body of work - it is worth it dude, it does pay off and you have definitely inspired us so many times to pick up our art materials and get drawing.

C's best bit: Mech-commander Kittens (I think she still wants a 'how to think when you draw' tute on Kittens, so perhaps for Volume 2?)

Daddy's favourite bit: I get completely lost in the imaginary alt-universe of a world that still riffs on 1930s and 40s movies and film noir with a sometimes sci-fi and modern twist. Just too, too good!

Check out Lorenzo and Robin's awesome blog over at http://theetheringtonbrothers.blogspot.com

"How to think when you draw" and Deluxe Collection Volume III were available via Kickstarter (self purchased, not supplied for review). 

Well, Supes doesn't look too happy about this does he!

This week's ReadItTorial jumps on a piece of homework sent home by a (possibly well meaning) teacher, urging kids to get into some 'proper' reading over the holidays.

The original text can be found below:


I'm guessing the intent here was to encourage children to push themselves a little in their reading journeys, perhaps engaging with texts they would normally pass on.

I was actually fine with this right up till the last sentence:

"Comic books, articles, eBooks on phones and children's picture books are not permitted."

Wait...WHAT? What fresh hell is this?

OK I'm obviously going to take issue with the first one. I've loved comics for as long as I've been able to read - possibly even before that, as comics are one of the most visual and approachable methods of beginning any reading journey, and some of the wordless comics can be enjoyed and translated into stories by anyone at any age, regardless of reading ability.

Dismissing comics as 'not proper reading' is, of course, ridiculous. Think of the social and political impact comics can have, dammit the CULTURAL impact of comics and comic-book heroes alone is just incredible. See just how many aspects of society soak up comic culture by proxy, and then consider how you'd engage a reluctant reader who loves movies and TV shows but perhaps hasn't quite got into books and stories yet.

Putting the hex on articles and eBooks (on phones) also puzzled me. Again reluctant readers are far more likely to engage with reading materials on their own terms, whether that means reading short articles in magazines or newspapers or perhaps reading the text in an adventure game on a phone. I do not see the difference between an eBook or any other book so I'm really baffled by the notion that they are in any way less of a reading challenge (particularly as I read an awful lot of my 'grown up non-bloggy' intake on my Kindle now, including comics just to add insult to injury).

Lastly there's a solid kick in the pants for children's picture books. Oh god, where would you even start with that one. Discounting children's picture books as 'not proper reading' again shows a huge walloping chunk of sheer ignorance on the teachers' part here. I would imagine in their head they had a list of titles they would rather steer kids away from but ignored the bigger picture, that picture books have moved on and evolved along with the complex expectations of children and their reading tastes changing generation on generation. Today's picture books can deal with sensitive issues, complex issues, downright controversial and subversive issues in much the same way modern comics do. They can subtly allude to social and political machinations in the real world, their meanings can be downright obvious or beautifully veiled in a story that, at first glance, may seem simple but has onion-like layers of complexity and interpretation.

As a children's book blogger I find this piece of summer homework particularly offensive, again I find the notion of any homework sent home during the long summer vac to be an annoyance rather than a necessity (you have no idea how many tantrums and screaming matches there have been at home because C was sent home with a Summer Work BOOK ffs! A whole workbook with 9 weeks worth of work in it. I just can't even..)

The crux of my annoyance with this, and I suspect the annoyance of a great many people who tweeted about this, is the inference that the best way to get kids reading is to push, prod, demand, force rather than encourage, persuade, engage with or - damn it - just LISTEN to what kids have to say on the subject of their own reading preferences. Turning kids right off reading at an early age with rubbish like this is so utterly stupid that, even with my most objective non-argumentative head on, I just can't see a counter-argument for this kind of utter ridiculousness at all.

Mention comics to most parents looking for a way to get their kids into reading for pleasure, and you're likely to get some real mixed reactions back...

It's time to jet off into the stratosphere with that intrepid knowledgable fellow Professor Astro Cat!

Fun, original, possibly a saviour of our sanity in the summer holidays? A great way of getting kids active? You bet we're up for this one...!

A gorgeous sumptuous luxurious story book that's perfect for settling down with before bedtime, well how could we possibly resist?

Book Island really do have the most amazing and gorgeous range of books for younger readers who demand a little bit more from their picture books...

Got an art itch that you need to scratch? In the long summer holidays we find that happens a lot...!

We really love the "Biographic" series from Ammonite Press, covering some incredible notaries in fictional and non-fictional history.

What better way to spend a boring summer holiday than sticking stickers all over the place. Not just any stickers though, sticky stick stickers!

Our Chapter Book of the Week this week is a series that's already well established. We're kicking ourselves that we haven't come across "The Hounds of Penhallow Hall" before now...

Our second Picture Book of the Week is a truly stunning homage to an absolutely amazing novel...

We've already seen a children's book all about Laika (well, several actually) but this week's Picture Book of the Week sings the praises of two more doggy space heroes

Hidden object apps on mobile phones and tablets are nothing new...

Wide Eyed Editions have really tapped into a fantastic way to deliver awesome non-fiction in a really cool new look for children's books...

Another awesome book from Usborne, this time with a non-fiction approach to learning more about our favourite insects. Bee kind, they're in decline!

Books like "Where's the Mermaid" by Chuck Whelon are an absolute godsend in the long summer hols...

Gosh, here's a series that takes us back almost ten years to when we first started exploring books for the first time together...

As a kid, I was always fascinated by tales of explorers - who put to sea in sailing ships to explore our planet...

LKP are just about saving our sanity this summer with a truly awesome selection of August releases to keep kids busy during the long vacation...

As the lovely weather continues, we've managed to escape to the seaside at least once...

During the summer months it's easy to overlook the amazing non-fiction titles that emerge ahead of those dreaded three words...

Little known blog fact: C is absolutely obsessed with mazes...

It's early August, and I'm sure for a lot of kids the thought of school is a million miles away...