A rather wise book person I once met described certain books as instantly feeling like "the future family heirlooms - passed from generation to generation". "Magical Animals at Bedtime" is one such book, a collected anthology of animal stories from Lou Kuenzler, Sandra Rigby and Andrew Weale with utterly gorgeous illustrations throughout. Like the fabulous Aesop's Fables, or many other collected animal stories, "Magical Animals at Bedtime" collects together short stories that also help a child deal with the issues surrounding them on a daily basis.

Charlotte's particular favourite - the story of a princess and a unicorn - dealt with the subject of kindness and sharing. The mean and rather demanding Princess who is all too used to getting her own way loses her temper and storms off into the forest when her stable boy won't let her ride her favourite horse. Through her silliness, she's soon lost and starts to panic but a beautiful Unicorn is on hand. Guiding her back to safety, the Princess realises how silly she has been and how right the stable boy was to stop her from riding her poorly steed.

Moral tales can be preachy but with each story comes a discussion point at the end to help children understand the story themes.

There are so many brilliantly written tales in this utterly gorgeous book that it is definitely something you and your children will want to return to again and again. Stories that deal with subjects as diverse as shyness, adapting to change, even learning the true value of friendship.

Each child will undoubtedly find a favourite story here, perhaps even one based on their favourite animal (we thoroughly loved the Giraffe story in here too).

As we mentioned at the top of the review, this is the sort of book that you will read to your children perhaps imagining bouncing THEIR children on your knee to read it to them one day too. Wonderful stuff!

"Magical Animals at Bedtime" will be released on 5th September, 2013

Charlotte's best bit: The grumpy and rather demanding princess learning her lesson!

Daddy's favourite bit: A beautiful book that is not only filled with great stories but could well contribute to your child's moral development too. Really lovely book.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Watkins Publishing)

Nora (or should that be gnaw-er) is a hungry little lass who scoffs every meal in seconds flat. But she's also very naughty, so when her tummy is still rumbling after dinner and after sneakily wolfing down mummy's freshly baked chocolate cake, Nora is sent to her room. Does this quell her rapacious appetite? Not a bit, because Nora will guzzle practically anything. Her toys, her bedding, her secret stash of midnight snacks tucked into a drawer. Nothing is safe - not even her clothes.

But children who eat too fast or guzzle the wrong things can suffer from a bout of (burp) indigestion, so watch out when Nora lets out the biggest belch in history. The consequences are dire!

Andrew Weale's fun rhyming text coupled with Ben Cort's brilliant illustrations mean lots of treats for the tongue to trip along, and lots of lovely things to see. We love a good foodie-based book, and this is a good guffaw.

Perhaps it might even show Charlotte that shoving a whole half a pizza into her chops so that she can speed through teatime and get back to playing isn't always the best thing to do. There's a rather neat ending with a twist, which we won't spoil for you of course. Just don't invite Nora round for dinner!

Charlotte's best bit: Nora's secret snack drawer (we really hope this doesn't give her any funny ideas about storing olives and babybels in her sock drawer at home)

Daddy's favourite bit: Beautifully rhyming, always funny with lots of tummy-rumblingly-great illustrations. See you at tea time!

Last year, we were fortunate enough to be included on the Red House Picture Book Awards Blog Tour, hosting a piece by Andrew Weale - author of this very book!

Now we're finally getting round to reviewing Spooky Spooky House, thanks to the lovely Zoe at "Playing by the Book" for sending us a copy to take a look at.

With a spooky haunted house, lots of 'reveals' in the shape of lift-the-flap bits, and monsters, ghosts, ghoulies and slime by the bucketload I thought Charlotte would love this and she did. I felt it was a bit...disapointing and I can't quite put my finger on why. Perhaps it was the constant 'tease' of the big reveal at the end (a heat-sensitive black panel which you have to 'warm up' to reveal the horrible character stalking the reader throughout the book - but in practice something we really struggled to get to work - we should've used Zoe's idea of getting a hot water bottle for the purpose, but used a hot radiator instead, OWCH!) meaning that story was sacrificed to be replaced by a sort of "are you scared yet? How about now, how about NOW?" type of thing as the running thread for Spooky Spooky House.

There's an essay (or at least a very lengthy blog post) in what scares kids or what's deemed spooky. It's not purely about the visual, it's not even about the 'BOO!' behind a liftable flap. In Charlotte's case it definitely wasn't this book - because despite loving the theme and the reveals and the panel at the back (and of course the sinister stalking character), to her it was as spooky as a timid dormouse hiding in a teapot. Of course we don't exactly want to traumatise our children (particularly before bedtime) with nightmarish visions that will keep them awake all night, but spooky is as spooky does - compare and contrast this with the utterly superb (and quite similar) "Haunted House" by Jan Pienkowski. 

Or perhaps even...that bear...under the stairs...

Charlotte's best bit: The big reveal. Once we got it working!

Daddy's favourite bit: A Wham reference at the start of the book made me giggle.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Zoe at Playing By The Book. We owe you one, Zoe!)