Testing. Testing is still seen as the be all and end all of driving and determining a child's level of literacy, numeracy and skill in other academic subjects. The current Government (I use that term loosely, 'cage of gibbons' is probably more of an appropriate description but I...

You've already seen our fabulous Halloween Book Roundup, but we felt this super-spooky book deserved a review slot all of its own. From the author of the fantastic "Inside the Monsters" comes "The House of Madame M" by Clotilde Perrin, translated by Daniel Hann. Take a mysterious...

Tonight's the night for dressing up, eating way too many sweeties, and scaring the bejesus out of your friends and neighbours with a spooky costume! But it's also a good time to dig out a brace of fantastic new scary books perfect for tonight's shenanigans, starting with a Book of...

The fantastic "Little People, Big Dreams" range from Frances Lincoln Children's Books is a real blog favourite but when we heard about this particular title, we just could not wait to get our hands on it. "Little People Big Dreams: Mary Shelley" by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara and...

Step back in time, way back in time to find out all about how our earth was formed - and how the most amazing lifeforms began to emerge from the slime and swamps of our primordial world. "Prehistoric: Dinosaurs, Megaladons and other Fascinating Creatures of the Deep Past" by Kathleen...

Welcome to our spooky October Chapter Book Roundup where we kick off with something entirely appropriate for the spooky goings on that'll happen over the next couple of days (No I'm not talking about Brexit, at least I hope I'm not!) So let's start with "The Ghouls of Howlfair" by...

This book is brilliantly cheeky, with a whole brilliant series of 'peep through' pages that work so cleverly for tinies who love animals. Yet the core theme underlying Tim Flach's excellent "Who am I?" is a serious one indeed. Each of the animals featured in this gloriously photographed...

Here's a book we've seen many, many different versions of during our (nearly) ten years of blogging about books, and one that many illustrators have put their own particular style to, drawing up the well-known and well-loved scenes from Kenneth Grahame's timeless children's classic. This...

Books that sensitively deal with the subject of loss and grief are very much a source of interest for us. It's a very tough thing to get absolutely right in a children's picture book, and in "Waiting for Wolf" by Sandra Dieckmann, Sandra builds a simple story of a friendship between...

A life on the ocean wave isn't the sort of thing you'd expect a cat to enjoy, but here's a fascinating book about a very special seafaring moggy indeed! "A Cat Called Trim" by Corinne Fenton and Craig Smith is the true story of a brave ship's cat who sailed the world with Captain...

Cats make everything about 5 billion percent cooler, it's a scientific fact - and it's not the only one crammed into "Cats React to Science Facts" by Izzi Howell. Prepare yourself for a mind-bending combination of cuteness and amazing eye-boggling science crammed into this zany and...

Our Chapter Book of the Week is something very special indeed, and a book that we really took our time over, savouring every single glorious descriptive moment of it. "The Girl who Speaks Bear" by Sophie Anderson, with cover by Kathrin Honesta, is the second book from the massively...

80 (seriously!!) years ago, the entire landscape of comics changed and in our third Book of the Week this week we're celebrating the mighty Marvel universe - not the billion-dollar money machine that is the Marvel Movie Universe - but the very comics that captured my imagination as...

Our Second Book of the Week this week is a truly stunning delve underneath our own skins, in what has swiftly become our favourite of the fantastic "Welcome to the Museum" books. "Anatomicum" by Dr Jennifer Z. Paxton and Katy Wiedemann peels back our outer layers for a look inside...