"The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder: Asian Hall of Fame" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle (Immedium Inc)

With our New Year just passed, and Chinese New Year on the way on the 5th February, it's very easy to take something that is a huge feature of both celebrations completely for granted.

"The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder" is a fantastic picture book in the new "Asian Hall of Fame" series by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle.

Publishers Immedium are very proud of the fact that this is the first time anyone's produced a picture book about this amazing and fascinating subject, that has its roots deep in Chinese history.

Step back in time with Ethan and Emma and their magical Red Panda pal Dao to the 1st Century, 2000 years ago in Ancient China the very first innovators began combining different ingredients to produce gunpowder.

Ethan and Emma find out more about gunpowder and fireworks with a very special magical animal pal!

The book touches on the military applications of gunpowder, of course - but concentrates most on the sheer spectacle of fireworks, and how all those dazzling colours and shapes are produced in the sky.

This is one of our favourite spreads - describing the 'stars' packed into each firework, that explode to produce such dazzling colours and designs

We found this absolutely fascinating from both the perspective of enjoying a slice of Chinese history that made a huge contribution to something that people all around the world can enjoy at different times of the year, but also from the technical perspective of learning some of the intricate secrets of how fireworks actually do their thing.

With a simple yet brilliantly explained set of facts worked into the story, and some really gorgeous illustrations, we'll be keeping an eye on Immedium's fabulous publications from now on (Look out for "The History of Ramen" in the same series by the way.

You can check out Immedium's fabulous range of books over on their website:

Immedium: wonderfully illustrated bookswww.immedium.com/

"The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder (Asian Hall of Fame)" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle is out now, published by Immedium (kindly supplied in digital format for review).