Book trailers always fill us with a hint of fear. How can you distil a brilliant book down into a short video clip?

The answer, as you'll see from the trailer above for Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen's brilliant "The Dark" is "with consummate ease". Love this to pieces!

You can see why it became a "ReadItDaddy Book of the Week" by reading our review. The Dark, by Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen is available from Orchard Books and all good indie booksellers.

Once again, we are faced with the near-impossible task of choosing between two books as Book of the Week this week. When a mysterious parcel came to the door, bearing a rather beautiful label with our address on and a young boy shining a torch, we weren't quite sure what to expect.

Opening the parcel, we were greeted with something that looked like it belonged in Stanley Kubrick's '2001 - A Space Odyssey".

The mysterious black box. Exciting? You betcha!

A black box? It could only mean one thing - the fruit of probably one of the most amazing collaborations in recent children's picture book history. The razor sharp writing and deliciously black prose of Lemony Snicket and the fantastic artwork of Jon Klassen.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we present to you our review and indeed one half of our Book of the Week nominations for this week - "The Dark"

A little boy, Laszlo, is afraid of the dark. All through the day, the dark lives in the basement under the house, or perhaps behind a cupboard or shower curtain - but at night the dark creeps out to envelop every room. Nothing can stop it, save for Laszlo and his nightlight and torch.

Laszlo is an incredibly brave little guy. In the daytime, he stands at the top of the stairs and talks to the dark. "Hi Dark, Hi" he says. But one night, the dark does not stop at Laszlo's door, it comes to visit him!

Peekaboo, I see you!

As you'd expect from such a pairing (and indeed from Orchard Books), this is a children's book of the highest possible quality. The positive message delivered around Laszlo's bravery, and the dark's 'voice' had such an electrifying effect on Charlotte that we worried it might dwell on her mind at night at her bedtime. But she loved Laszlo almost immediately, and loved the fact that Laszlo (just like her) had a nightlight and torch to keep the dark at bay.

We often wonder why children are immediately drawn to books that are dark in tone, perhaps it's for the same reasons that adults seek out extreme ways of scaring themselves. Horror films, crazy roller coasters, extreme sports, naked bungee jumping, that sort of thing.

To Charlotte though, this book was just utterly perfect. We still won't be reading it to her at bedtime - and we always choose the brightest days to dip into it, but we admire the way the book empowers children through Laszlo to challenge their own fears, and particularly for children (like Charlotte) who are afraid of the dark, the way it ends with reassurance and perhaps even a strong message of understanding and friendship rather than something that merely goes 'bump' in the night.

Charlotte's best bit: The 'voice' I read the dark in. A monotone, no emotion, completely flat (and very hard to do with a book you're trying not to scare a child with). Think Cyberman-voice, eek!

Daddy's favourite bit: As a massive fan of "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" and also of Jon Klassen's other children's books, who could possibly resist this?

(Kindly sent to us for review by Orchard Books. "The Dark" is available in Hardback on 3rd April 2013)

So here's Part 2 of our double 'Book of the Week' nomination for this week, and it's a book that had both Charlotte and I laughing out loud (and shouting out loud) at how utterly well observed the little girl is in this book.

Bella is not happy. Bella is having a big shouting day which kicked off when her absolutely adorable little brother, Bob, came into Bella's room and started licking her jewellery (don't you just HATE it when that happens?)

Bella's day goes from bad to worse. Every little thing sets her off, from a yucky breakfast to a prim and proper play-date going horribly horribly wrong.

Charlotte and I made poor Mummy's ears hurt because it's impossible to read Bella's dialogue without shouting (though we did try not to shout too loudly). Charlotte fell hopelessly in love with Bob ("Because he's SO cute!") and as the story progressed she loved seeing Bella's meltdown turn into a full on dizzy shouty tired ranty temper tantrum (funnily enough, I rather enjoyed Rebecca's absolutely pin-sharp toddler meltdown observations, which are spot on and then some!)

As you can imagine, nothing will cheer up this fiery little minx. A trip to the supermarket just makes matters worse, school ballet turns into a sulk-a-thon and every time poor little Bob (bless 'im) tries to help, Bella just explodes like a landmine in a little red dress.

It's incredibly easy to see why this was the Roald Dahl Funny Prize winner this year. It's brilliant for both children and parents. You will have to read the book yourself right to the end to find out how Bella's Big Shouting Day ends, but we urge you to seek out this and Rebecca's other brilliant books, they're uproariously funny from start to finish.

Charlotte's best bit: What Bella does to Bob later on in the book. The horrors, the horrors!

Daddy's favourite bit: The fact that this book so gleefully captures (and almost celebrates) the stunning spectacle of a toddler meltdown so utterly perfectly. I love the fact that for most of the book, Bella's expression is like a big black hole with a pair of eyes and typically scruffy toddler hair slapped on top of it. Brilliant, brilliant (and let's shout the last one) BRILLIANT!

(Kindly supplied to us for review by Jonathan Cape PB Ltd)

As we mentioned in our "The Flower" review, we simply could not choose between two books so we've rather slyly chosen a book each for "Book of the Week" this week. Again, this book came as a recommendation from Beth Cox (who is either going to develop a big head or a complex if we keep mentioning her but she is awesome!) after a discussion about a worry that inclusive books would be a bit 'grey and boring'.

The description 'grey and boring' couldn't be further from Rabbityness. Though it starts off fairly monochrome, with some lovely inky drawings of a Rabbit doing - well - rabbity things, it soon explodes into an ocean of colours as we discover that our rabbity friend loves doing unrabbity things too.

He paints, he dances beautifully, he plays music, and he soon fills the forest where he lives with beautiful colours and sounds.

It's infectious stuff so all the other rabbits soon discover that they love what he does too!

Then one day Rabbit disappears. No one can find him, all that is left is a deep, dark hole...

At this point in the book - when we first read it together - Charlotte stopped, and a look crossed her face that I'd never seen before. A look of absolute and complete sorrow. As parents we're probably quite used to seeing our children upset, crying, having tantrums - sometimes over the most trivial things, but I hadn't seen this - it was actually fairly upsetting and made me cuddle her close as we continued with the book.

I feel we're meandering into spoiler territory here so please - stop right now if you want to experience the book unsullied by our review or our opinions - but we should carry on and tell you that Rabbit doesn't just leave a deep dark hole - he leaves a legacy behind, a legacy of sharing his unrabbityness, his delicious infectious enthusiasm for colour and music and fun and laughter with his friends in the forest.

We've seen a few books that deal with loss and grief in a fairly rudimentary (and sometimes outright clumsy) fashion, but nothing that deals with it as delicately but also as triumphantly as Rabbityness. It is quite unlike anything we've come to expect from children's picture books but I'll let you into a secret - this is exactly the sort of thing that Child's Play do, and make it look so durned easy too.

Charlotte's best bit: The one frame where Rabbit is tucked up snugly having a snooze. So...rabbity!

Daddy's favourite bit: That moment where the book's tone momentarily changes and the impact (and I do mean impact) it had on Charlotte. Even when we re-read this, it had a similar effect - simply because to a child that feeling can be so wholly unfamiliar and seeing how she dealt with it was absolutely amazing.

(Kindly supplied to us for review by Child's Play International Ltd)