"Going to the Volcano" by Andy Stanton and Miguel Ordonez (Hodder Children's Books)

Such a happy gleeful little band of creatures gather together for a day trip with a difference...
...and this day trip definitely comes with a colossal "Don't try this at home, kids!"

Andy Stanton is back with a crazy and whacky picture book and in "Going to the Volcano" - with fantastic illustrations from Miguel Ordonez, these happy little critters have one goal in mind - a trip to the volcano!

Oooh it'll be lovely, a huge gigantic volcano erupting, exploding, showering everyone with liquid hot magma. But of course you've got to get there first.

So off they go, a colour changing cat, a large dinosaur and her offspring, a crazed robot, a boy and a girl, a strange collection of weird alien things and a fabulous volcano cheerleader troop all itching to pitch themselves headlong into the fiery abyss.

YAY! It's so exciting!! Gimme a Vee, Gimme an Oh! Gimme an El, ahh you know the rest.

This book fizzes with an equal amount of craziness, energy, vibrant colour and an enviable collection of kooky characters (watch out for the end-papers on this one, they're just fantastic and kids will probably love the last end-papers more than they'll love the actual book itself).

We loved this, and loved imagining the pitch for this. "Yeah well I'm going to gather together a cute collection of characters then blow them all up with a volcano. Cool eh?"

Andy, we salute you!

C's best bit: The colour changing cat (who ends up a really cool 'colour' indeed!)

Daddy's favourite bit: I just love the ridiculousness of this book and it's so needed in a world of children's books that offer up moral lessons, or just bore the pants off you by going on about how excellent friends are. We need more stuff like this! Sometimes it pays to just be completely whacky and off the wall so why don't we see this sort of thing more in kid books?

"Going to the Volcano" by Andy Stanton and Miguel Ordonez is out now, published by Hodder Children's Books (kindly supplied for review).