ReadItDaddy's Second Book of the Week - Week Ending 16th November 2018: "Speed Birds" by Alan Snow (OUP / Oxford Children's Books)

Our second book of the week is something really special, from a master of explaining how things work...
In fact we have very VERY fond memories of Alan Snow's superb "How Santa Really Works" (as well as his "How Cats / How Dogs Really Work" books) so I had to actually do a bit of double checking here that it was the same Alan Snow behind our second book of the week this week, the truly fabulous "Speed Birds".

Crows aren't usually the type of birds you associate with flying fast. Most of the time they're lazily trying to insert themselves in your chimney while cawing loudly, but the crows in this book are more than a little bit special.

The story starts with a young crow who dreams of flying faster than a Pigeon. Faster even than a diving Peregrine Falcon.

The problem is that crows just aren't cut out for speed (I think it's probably down to those heavy beaks). But a young crow's dreams aren't to be so easily defeated.

A fairly peaceful scene of crow domestic bliss cannot possibly prepare you for what's to come in this book

This particular clever crow observes that those weirdly shaped 'human-things' that mooch around the planet are pretty good at building machines that go very fast indeed.

With the help of his enthusiastic buddies, this little crow is about to learn all about how cars work - and how very very fast cars work in particular.

Clever birds!

Armed with tons of real-world facts about how engines work, and how aerodynamics help a car travel faster, it's time for the crow and his buddies to build a crow-record-breaking speed machine using their local scrap pile.

Distance Divided by Time equals Speed!

This is quite staggeringly original, the idea of combining a story with non-fiction elements (HA! And I will say again to a few folk who, some time ago, I pitched the idea of a fusion between Fiction and Non-Fiction to - HA, I say!)

So well done, so beautifully illustrated, so detailed and just so much durned fun that will have you rooting for Team Crow at every turn of the page.

C's best bit: The crow's final design for their speed racer is just jaw-droppingly beautiful

Daddy's favourite bit: Wow. If you have no idea how to engage a reluctant reader who neither likes fiction or non fiction titles, this amazingly entertaining and brilliantly presented fusion of the two is just jaw-droppingly good.

"Speed Birds" by Alan Snow is out now, published by OUP / Oxford Children's Books (kindly supplied for review).