Loud is the word here, in a busy and energetic little book from a hugely talented author-illustrator.

"I Don't Want to be Quiet" by Laura Ellen Anderson centres around a little girl who, just like my daughter, seems to make an awful big din for someone so diminutive.

She loves stomping up and down stairs. STOMP STOMP STOMP!

She loves drumming with spoons! CLATTER BASH CRASH!

Silence is not her bestie, and all mum wants to do is get on with some work, but this little miss has other ideas.

How about some nice, quiet, gentle HUMMING instead!

A hilarious gag-filled story that'll have most parents nodding tiredly along in recognition of the observations made here. For all those of you (like us) who get to the weekend and wonder why the house suddenly sounds like a cacophony of noise, this is a brilliant little read.

Sum this book up a sentence: A little girl's noisy life depicted perfectly, in a story that kids will absolutely love reading again and again.

"I Don't Want to be Quiet!" by Laura Ellen Anderson is out now, published by Bloomsbury (kindly supplied for review). 

Time for a light-hearted and hugely fun tour of our solar system with a dynamic duo of kidlit creatives ready to whisk us off in a fab little spaceship, with a poochy companion who steals every scene.

"Meet the Planets" by Caryl Hart and Bethan Woollvin is brilliantly engaging, and perfect for mini space fans who love finding out more about outer space, and the amazing planets that are our galactic neighbours.

From mysterious Mars to sultry Saturn, gigantic Jupiter to gaseous Uranus, climb on board for a really brilliant and innovative way to explore space.

We love that Bethan still manages to work in her brilliant art style into this book. A real piece of genius linking up two of our favourite creative folk.

Sum this book up in a sentence: A fun and bouncy journey around our solar system for mini space fans, this is the perfect introductory book for kids who love finding out more about our galaxy

"Meet the Planets" by Caryl Hart and Bethan Woollvin is out now, published by Bloomsbury (kindly supplied for review). 

We've recently been musing on Twitter about the sheer quality of picture book releases we're seeing now that the chilly autumn breeze is once more upon us. There's definitely something comforting about cosying up with a picture book together as the weather turns colder, and what better book to cosy up with than a delightful and thoroughly original mighty-girl-and-dino tale.

"The Girl and the Dinosaur" by Hollie Hughes and Sarah Massini is the sort of book we've been hoping to see more of - one where the "quiet kids" get their chance to shine, and become heroes of their own stories - rather than a story that just blares loudly that you need to be charismatic and outspoken to get on in life.

The "Quiet kid" in this story is a little girl called Marianne (and if you haven't already fallen in love with her purely from the cover pic and hearing her name for the first time, you most certainly will by the end of this story). Marianne doesn't really play much with the other kids, but she's often seen scouring the beach near her home.

She's looking for something special - Dinosaur bones. But not just your ordinary everyday fossils, she wants to collect enough to build a very special friend indeed.

As she slips into a blissful sleep one night, she first wishes with all her might that her dream might just come true. Her wish - to meet and befriend an amazing dinosaur companion to go on adventures with. 

Lots of kids will be covering the Second World War in the curriculum when they start back at school, and this fantastic book from Nick Hunter gets kids off to a flying start with tons of amazing facts, historical archive records, photos and illustrations taken from the National Archives.

"National Archives: World War 2 - The Story Behind the War that Divided the World" is a thoroughly researched book brilliantly presented with the historical timeline of the build up to the war, the war years themselves, and the aftermath detailed in a way that will allow children to dip in and find exactly the information they need.

Find out the impact the war had on our ordinary everyday lives, the technological advances that brought about terrifying weapons on both sides, and the human cost of the conflict - and the many lives that were lost.

Many children will still have grandparents or great-grandparents who were alive in the war years, or perhaps even fought in the conflict, and this book serves as a valuable reference but also a poignant reminder of what war does to ordinary everyday families.

"World War II: The Story Behind the War that Divided the World" by Nick Hunter is out now, published by Bloomsbury Educational (kindly supplied for review)

Here's an interesting book that took us a while to truly 'get' - as it seems to mix a couple of messages together before it gets to the nitty gritty of what it tries to impart.

"Ravi's Roar" by Tom Percival is the story of little Ravi, a kid who is the smallest in his family.

It sucks being small, and Ravi often finds that his diminutive size means he gets overlooked for all the good stuff that his older brothers and sisters seem to enjoy.

Even simple things like playing at the playground and not quite reaching those monkey bars. Or being told you're too tiny to go on rides.

When Ravi finally snaps, something amazing happens - he turns into a TIGER! And no one's going to tell a Tiger that they can't do something.

Once Ravi calms down again though, he realises that perhaps losing your temper and having a tantrum isn't a great idea either, as no one wants to play with a tiger, they're far too angry, grumpy and fierce!

Tom does some of his best ever illustration work here, but as we said above, the pacing of the story felt a little off - like we could've done with seeing Ravi's "Tiger" behaviour dotted throughout the book, with the moral twist of no one getting on with his tigrish self perhaps shown in other situations. However, that said, it is one of the few books out there that does deal with children's anger in a stylish and effective way, so deserves kudos for that (and quite honestly, that bit with the ice creams? Yeah we'd have lost it after that too!)

Sum this book up in a sentence: Find out what happens when our tempers get the better of us, in a gorgeously illustrated story ticking diversity boxes and observing common kid behaviour in a neat moral tale.

"Ravi's Roar" by Tom Percival is out on 8th August 2019, published by Bloomsbury Children's Books (kindly supplied for review). 

That miscreant tot Frank is back for a new and exciting adventure, following on from "Baby's First Bank Heist"

In "Baby's first Jailbreak" Frank's zoo is suffering from a drop in visitor numbers. Who can be responsible?

Frank soon realises he has a competitor. Baby Bruce! He's a greedy little scamp who's hungry for fame and wants to see Baby Frank's zoo go out of business.

But Frank soon stumbles across a secret. All the animals in Baby Bruce's zoo are unhappy and miserable - so it's time for a grand jailbreak, a baby jailbreak to be precise!

Will Frank prevail?

This is another fizzingly original and brilliant caper from Jim and Stephen, filled with tons of hilarious little details and in-jokes, once again proving that you can't put Baby (Frank) in the corner!

Sum this book up in a sentence: A brilliant baby-animal-filled escape romp that's brilliantly original and superbly entertaining.

"Baby's First Jailbreak" by Jim Whalley and Stephen Collins is out now, published by Bloomsbury Children's Books (kindly supplied for review). 

Coming from a family where nearly everyone else is lanky and over 6ft tall, it hasn't always been easy being Hobbit-esque in stature.

Blog favourite superstar Laura Ellen Anderson is back with another brilliant picture book, this time tackling the subject of being pocket-sized in "I Don't Want to be Small"

The central character is a little boy who is fed up with being really little. 

Sometimes books just fall through the gaps in our review schedule, to nestle unread beneath the mire and dust deep in the gutter of our blog's overspill bin.

Well, that's not actually what happened with "Fortunately, The Milk" by genius author Neil Gaiman and equally genius illustrator Chris Riddell (or fantastic artist Skottie Young if you're a US reader!). You see there we were, back in 2013, all geared up to review the very socks off this fantastic book. We waited and waited, we wrote about it lots, full of anticip..........ation and joy.

But the review copy never turned up. Now, I'm not going to have a go at Bloomsbury here as they do send us lovely things to review (though only 'propah' journalists get their middle grade / Harry Potter stuff).

This one really fell through the cracks, and after recently hearing many Twitter folk describing it as a brilliant example of a time travel story for middle graders, I thought I'd just better go and flippin' well buy a copy 6 years late.

So, was it worth the wait? Here's a thing. Sometimes when you've wanted to read something for ages, you can get so over-hyped about a book that when it finally arrives it can't possibly measure up to the hype. Thus was the case with "Fortunately, the Milk" which started out OK, but took a good few re-readings before I finally "got" it.

It's the story of an ordinary family. A mum, a dad, a couple of kids. As is the norm with children's books the mum is a hyper-powered corporate suit-wearing superhero who is nipping off to a conference, leaving the slightly hopeless but well-meaning dad behind to look after the kids.

She leaves behind a long list of chores for the dad - but chief amongst them is to go and get some more milk, after all no one wants to eat cornflakes with tomato ketchup on them do they? (C: I would!)

Unfortunately,  the milk. Yes, as you'd probably have guessed, Dad forgets to buy any but the next morning, before breakfast, he nips out to the corner shop to obtain the revered cow-juice. 

More cute craziness and zaniness now from hit CBeebies show Olobob Top. Let's go drop in on Norbert!

It's early August, and I'm sure for a lot of kids the thought of school is a million miles away...

Our Chapter Book of the Week this week isn't exactly new, but it seems incredible to think that we haven't reviewed it on the blog before...

Childhood anxiety can be a very real and very stressing thing. Any book that can tackle this tricky subject with aplomb deserves applause...

Forget the elephant in the room, what about the Elephant trying to horn in on your building site? More fun from Patricia and David!

Here's a fun romp with a baby who needs a serious lesson about right vs wrong...

Do you dare to be different? Here's a crackingly good allegorical story for little ones...

In this World Cup year, you can expect a huge flood of amazing books about the beautiful game - but sometimes the best books are the ones that play things a little closer to home...

A sizzling, funny and brilliant rhyming sing-a-long book that is destined to be much in demand by your littlies. Turn the ignition and hop on board...!

The hotly anticipated follow-up to Kate Pankhurst's "Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World" is here - and this time they're making history...

Day 22 of our Booky Advent Calendar and here's a gorgeously cute little story for your really tiny ones.

Who could resist a story about a brave little penguin.

In "Snow Penguin" our curious little penguin hero decides to explore the ice and the snow and the sea.

On his travels he sees two blue whales, a family of sea lions and a whole school of orca, but soon Penguin starts to miss his own family.

Sometimes coming home is the best adventure of all.

Tony's rhyming style is a joy to read aloud. Coupled with Alison's cuddly and fun illustrations, this is a lovely little bedtime read for snuggling up with - and if by now your kids are practically hopping from foot to foot with excitement about the big day coming up, this'll definitely relax and calm them down a tad.

"Snow Penguin" by Tony Mitton and Alison Brown is out now, published by Bloomsbury Children's Books (kindly supplied for review). 

Our triple-headed Cerberus of a Book of the Week collection this week sees us finally let loose on the first three illustrated editions of J.K Rowling's awesome Harry Potter books...