#Booky100Keepers Day 39: "Hortense and the Shadow" and "The Bandit Queen" by Natalia and Lauren O'Hara (Picture Penguin)

Some folk that fetch up in our #Booky100Keepers are just so talented that we're in total awe of them. It's also wonderful when you strike up a dialogue with them on Twitter and realise that they're genuinely lovely as well, as is the case with the fabulous O'Hara sisters, Natalia and Lauren.

They first blew a hole in our "Book of the Week" slot with the truly magical "Hortense and the Shadow", a book that (like so many of our keepers) feels like a story you've known forever, but have waited until the right people have come along to 'own' it and make it theirs, and also make it shine.

The story opens up with the sort of rich descriptive language that instantly makes it a genuine pleasure to read aloud. In the dark and wolfish woods lives Hortense - a little girl "as sad as an owl" because she has an unwanted stalker, she truly hates her own shadow.

It's always there. It follows her everywhere. But Hortense has a plan to rid herself of the wretched thing once and for all!

Once it's finally gone though, Hortense's life is happy for a while until a fateful night when a crew of bandits threatens her. Who will come to her rescue? The answer may be expected but the delivery of that moment in the book is just wonderfully done.

Bandits feature again in Natalia and Lauren's second book, the truly fabulous and rambunctious "The Bandit Queen"...

This is a riotous book full of energy and humour as a slightly less menacing (but equally mischievous) group of Bandits embark on a career of robbery and thoroughly bad behaviour (they don't aim when they pee for starters, I mean that's a treasonous offence right there!)

The book bounces along in perfect pitched rhyme until the bandits inadvertently steal something from an orphanage that they really didn't expect to find amongst their loot - a little girl.

Not just any little girl but a little girl with a ton of bravery, sass and mischief herself - set to rule over them as their bandit queen.

But she tires of their bad behaviour and sometimes wishes for an ordinary life - but perhaps there's a way that those naughty bandits can turn their talents in a different direction, to become something even more amazing than just a bunch of witless thieves with the right person guiding them!

I honestly can't wait to find out what Natalia and Lauren come up with next. With Lauren illustrating Sophie Dahl's "Madame Badobedah" most recently (sadly not a book we were ever sent to review, we hardly ever get 'celeb' books probably because we're usually pretty mean about them but would've loved a flick through just for Lauren's art!), we are both hoping to see more bandits, more mischief and more utterly divine picture books from this talented duo in the future.

Original Review Links: 

ReaditDaddy's Second Picture Book of the Week - Week Ending 20th October 2017 - "Hortense and the Shadow" by Natalia and Lauren O'Hara (Picture Puffin)

ReadItDaddy's Third Book of the Week - Week Ending 30th November 2018: "The Bandit Queen" by Natalia and Lauren O'Hara (Picture Puffin)