Our Third Picture Book of the Week this week is a scintillating and thoroughly mischievous future classic from an incredibly talented duo...

We'll kick off our "Adult / YA comic of the Week" review with a simple "not for kids" warning - though this is something that most of us will be absolutely dying to share with them once they're a bit older

Our Chapter Book of the Week is more than your average animal yarn. Meet a cat who knows how to cut a dash...!

Wow, our second book of the week is an absolute MAMMOTH book that captures the history of our planet from Big Bang to Big Badaboom!

Our first Book of the Week this week should come with a paper bag to hyperventilate into, if you find yourself laughing until you can barely breathe...

We make no apologies for being well and truly into the christmas spirit. It tends to kick off early at ReadItDaddy Towers and we're already eyeing up the Christmas Decorations, readying ourselves for the festive season.

Book wise we've seen SO MANY brilliant christmas books that we're devoting our entire run-up to Christmas to them, but before that let's take a look at a gorgeous selection of books from Pan Macmillan and Egmont Publishing, each and every one of which would make a perfect gift for the book lover in your family.

First there's the utterly adorable "Grandpa Christmas" by Michael Morpurgo and Jim Field. A master storyteller, an illustrator who charms us to bits with his glorious illustrations, it's like the best christmas present ever! "Grandpa Christmas" tells the story of Little Mia who, along with her family, love to read their Christmas Letter from Grandpa every year.

Grandpa's letter urges everyone to think about how we can look after our beautiful world, and treasure all the wonderful things in it. At a time of year when it's so easy to take things for granted, this poignant christmas message is a truly wonderful piece of work from two immensely talented superstars in kidlit. Put it at the top of your picture book buying list this christmas!

"Grandpa Christmas" by Michael Morpurgo and Jim Field is out now, published by Egmont. 

Fortnite? What's that? Pff, we still prefer the delights of Mojang's Minecraft, and Egmont have all your survival needs covered in the stupendous "Minecraft Survival Collection" - a bumper selection of Minecraft books to keep you busy worldbuilding (and surviving) over the yuletide season.

With exclusive tips from the developers at Mojang, the Minecraft Survival Collection might just save your life! The Guide to Exploration will teach you how to thrive in the Overworld. The Guide to the Nether and the End will teach you how to survive in each of these dangerous dimensions. The Guide to Enchantments and Potions will teach you how to enchant your equipment and brew useful potions. The Guide to Farming will teach you how to be self-sufficient in everything from food to hostile mob drops (plus, if you're like us, who can resist building a huge farm full of cute animals and their babies

Once again we're preparing our wares!

It's the time of year where the publishing industry traditionally enters complete overdrive, in order to promote and push books they'd really love you to buy your little ones over the Holiday / Festive period.

We were recently contacted by the lovely folk at Bushel & Peck Books who have recently taken on a huge task over in the US - to ensure that kids from all social backgrounds and circumstances get access to dazzlingly brilliant books.

David and Stephanie Miles have a fantastic idea to address the fact that for every 300 kids in certain poorer neighbourhoods stateside, there's only one book owned. That's a pretty shocking statistic, particularly when you consider it's A) very similar here in the UK and B) like the UK, stateside library services are also suffering from cuts and a gradual decline as other services are seen as more important in poorer communities.

Bushel and Peck's Kickstarter is live, and we think it's a cause worth supporting so hop on over there and give David and Stephanie some support, whichever side of the pond you live on.

Here at ReadItDaddy we're about to pack up our review copy surplus again for our Annual Book Sale in aid of our local church's charities. We always have a lot of fun doing this, but more than that we get a huge, huge kick out of seeing kids walking away with a prized book that they may not have been able to afford otherwise. We mark our books down accordingly, and though the aim is to raise money for the charities mentioned, it's definitely hugely satisfying when a child comes along with a bit of their pocket money, or parents on a low income come along to pick up a bargain or two - hopefully getting as much enjoyment out of those wonderful books as we do.

There's a clear link between children having ready access to their own books at home and their development / learning journeys in school being positively affected by this. Something that's been charted and talked about for many years in fact. Both my wife and I know that reading aloud to our daughter means that she can cope with the language and literacy workload at school when others in her class / year are still struggling. But it should never have to be about how much money you have, or whether you can afford books - books should be available to all kids in copious amounts, and our library services (who are often the only places kids can go and grab a massively diverse range of books) should be supported and well funded.

Do drop along to our book sale if you're in Abingdon on Saturday 1st December 2018 - at 35 Ock Street! We'd love to see you!

Welcome, welcome to another fantastic fantabulous book-busting roundup of amazing chapter books for your early chapter readers and middle graders.

This month we've got a humungous list of books that we've been enjoying as the inevitable pre-christmas rush continues, starting with a hugely prolific author who seems to be able to turn her hand to just about every subject you can imagine.

"Evie's War" by Holly Webb is the heart-melting and poignant tale of a girl living at the time of the outbreak of the First World War.

The story opens on the eve of the First World War, and is particularly poignant in this centenary year of the end of hostilities. The five children have grown up - war will change their lives for ever.

Cyril is off to fight, Anthea is at art college, Robert is a Cambridge scholar and Jane is at high school.

Santa's sack is bulging with amazing Christmas books this year, so before you start adding lots and lots of books to your wish list, we thought we'd show you a huge selection of gorgeous titles from one of our favourite publishers.

Nosy Crow's books are always of the highest quality, with engaging, endearing and enduring characters that will become firm Christmas favourites with your little ones. So let's dig right into that sack and pull out our first book!

"Pip and Posy: The Christmas Tree" by Axel Scheffler is a fabulous new story with everyone's favourite rabbit and mouse.

Pip and Posy are getting into the festive swing of things, and are decorating the Christmas Tree with a ton of lovely christmas decorations.

The only problem is, every time Posy leaves the room there seems to be one less decoration on the tree when she comes back.

It's only when she finds Pip lying on the sofa, looking rather rotund, and groaning about a tummy ache that she realises what's happened. Will Pip learn his lesson? A festive treat and a nice twist of an ending makes this utterly essential for little ones.

"Pip and Posy: The Christmas Tree" by Axel Scheffler is out now, published by Nosy Crow. 

Next in our book sack...

Something for really tiny tinies who may be enjoying their first Christmas.

The ticklishly fun "Where's Santa Claus?" by Ingela P. Arrhenius is beautifully designed to be a sensory experience for tiddlers who love "lift the flap" fun, and there's a mirror tucked into the story as well so they can truly feel part of the story.

Help Santa find all the christmas characters from naughty elves to fuzzy reindeer, and of course the most important christmas character of all - you!

It's a really superb little sturdy book this, perfect as a stocking filler for little ones who love bold bright colours and simple shapes, and lots of interactive elements in their stories.

"Where's Santa Claus?" by Ingela P. Arrhenius is out now, published by Nosy Crow. 

Next up, a rather special moggy indeed!

In "Sammy Claws the Christmas Cat" by Lucy Rowland and Paula Bowles you'll meet Santa's furriest little helper.

Santa's kitten Sammy will sleep absolutely ANYWHERE, and like most cats, that usually leads to trouble.

This time Sammy has ended up sleeping in a box on Christmas Eve - completely unaware that it's a present box.

Before he knows it, Sammy finds himself wrapped up as a Christmas parcel and bundled onto the sleigh with the other presents!

EEKS MEOW!

How will Sammy escape? And how will he save the presents from two robbers with plans to steal them all away . . .? A brilliantly exciting Christmas story perfect for cat lovers everywhere, with a truly adorable central character. Blissful!

"Sammy Claws the Christmas Cat" by Lucy Rowland and Paula Bowles is out now, published by Nosy Crow. 

Phew, after all that excitement, what's next?

The next book is a heartfelt and festive story of a lonely little boy and his secret wish - to find a friend. In "The Boy and the Bear" by dream team Tracey Corderoy and Sarah Massini, the lonely little boy receives an invitation to play written on a paper boat!

How mysterious! It seems that he has found the best friend he's been longing for - at last!

But Bear isn't quite the playmate the boy had imagined. If only he knew how to play games properly! But when Bear starts to build a treehouse, the boy is intrigued and a magical summer begins.

As autumn passes and the first winter snowflakes start to fall, the boy is left alone, and only then does he truly realise what he has lost . . . Until at last spring comes again and the friends are joyfully reunited with a very special hug!

A wonderful and touching story that stretches across the seasons, and makes us all wish we could hibernate like Bear! Magical!

"The Boy and the Bear" by Tracey Corderoy and Sarah Massini is out now, published by Nosy Crow.

Next, it's the welcome return of Jan Fearnley's timeless classic "Little Robin Red Vest" - presented in a very special 20th Anniversary edition with new artwork, but the same glorious wintry seasonal story that's a true christmas classic in every sense of the word.

The tale begins one frosty evening, a week before Christmas. 

Learning other languages is now such a huge part of C's learning journey at school that we love any opportunity to also bring that work home.

For me it gives me a valuable chance to brush up my own (quite frankly terrible) French skills with the brilliant new "Hello French" series of titles from B Small Publishing.

They've kindly sent us a selection of books from their new range, so we'll dip into our book bag and take a look at a few of them.

First is the fabulous "French English Picture Dictionary" by Sam Hutchinson, Marie-Therese Bougard and Kim Hankinson.

This visual dictionary covers words in a selection of categories, with over 350 essential French vocabulary words to tickle your tonsils with, and brilliant tips on how to pronounce each word phonetically.

It's a great mix of words and illustrations, perfect for little ones who are just starting to learn French (or 10 year olds like C who just want to learn a whole set of new words for things).

Then there's "A Beginner's Guide to French" again by Sam, Marie-Therese and Kim - this time ramping up the language skills to the next level with an essential guide to forming phrases and sentences, and having fun while you do so.

This is the perfect book to accompany school starters as they learn French. 

Here's a fabulous story that's a little bit scary and spooky at first...

What makes the perfect bedtime picture book? Shhh, and we'll tell you...!

As 2018 draws to a close, there's absolutely no doubt which type of book has really flooded the market this year...

It's quite often disappointing to see new non-fiction books about animals feature the same species over and over again...

Claire Potter's awesome "Little Blighters" series is an absolute must for harried parents who just need a little extra help dealing with their own little Bs!

Our YA / Adult Comic of the Week should definitely be kept well away from your little ones, even if they like the look of the cute character coyly peeking out of the front cover...

This week's Chapter Book of the Week may not be new, but it's new to us - and we absolutely loved it so here we are with "Millions" by Frank Cottrell-Boyce...

I rather liked the description from Sarah Ardizzone of this one. "A Fine Bromance!"

Our second Picture Book of the Week this week is a truly stunning non-fiction book that does far more than dig into dinos...!

Our first Picture Book of the Week this week harks back to our very first forays into reviewing children's books...

Over the last 8 weeks of the "Writing for Children" course, we've learned a lot about "The Story Moment" in middle grade fiction. Our tutor, Nicola M. Brown describes it in a way that always reminds me of spinning plates, but it's actually been a revelation to fully understand just how important the story moment is, and how you need to support it by nurturing and feeding it with peripheral information as your story unfolds.

I've read Cressida Cowell's "How to Train your Dragon" series alongside my daughter (who actually prefer's Cressida's new series "The Wizards of Once" more) and in last night's classroom session it really began to  make a lot of sense how clever Cressida is at structuring her stories to keep that meter / flow needle from wandering too far away from the story moment.

Cressida Cowell's hugely successful "How to Train your Dragon" series, a masterclass in maintaining the moment!

So imagine your paragraphs and sentences as being like the dead centre of a measuring device (trying to think of a good comparison - say a set of weighing scales or an oscilloscope perhaps).

If your story maintains the 'story moment' then the reader is right there, in that moment, at that time.

Every time you move your needle away from dead centre (perhaps to go into an elaborate description of something, or a memory, a recollection or flashback, or a piece of world-building) you're taking the reader out of that moment and into a different timeframe where - alas - they can end up being bogged down.

Writing for Middle Grade doesn't always allow writers like me (who are completely in love with elaborate descriptions and metaphor) to get away with moving away from that story moment for very long.

Cressida keeps that meter more or less dead centre the whole time, but subtly feeds her story with the enrichment of character and world-building in tiny little nuggets of information that she slides in between the passages of dialogue.

One thing I've noticed in the time we've begun reviewing more middle grade books together, is that C absolutely craves stories that stay within the story moment, and it's amazing how many commercial middle grade novels break this rule very early on, leading to a story getting bogged down in the first chapter or so as the author struggles to balance those spinning plates in a way that will keep a child's attention locked on.

I think of all the sessions I've attended during this class, 'the story moment' was best described and made most sense last night. Writing fantasy stories is the most fun, and it's the genre I'm always drawn to in my own writing - but sometimes it takes someone else pointing out something that, on reflection, seems so simple to really revolutionise the way I've been thinking about and approaching writing for kids.

Absolutely brill, but now to put it into practice!!

Time for a modern update of a classic fable now, and an underdog (or should that be under-aardvark) story solidly delivering a message that's important to everyone - never give up!

Molly Potter is the author of many brilliant self-help books for helping children deal with difficult subjects...