Standing on the shoulders of literary giants is no easy task. Julia Donaldson is well established in her own right as a fantastic children's author with a wonderful gift for spinning the most amazing storyworlds from her rhymes. So it comes as no surprise that she's a huge fan of Edward Lear and his awesome mix of nonsense poetry and amazing characters.

We've recently reviewed "The Owl and the Pussycat" with a foreword by Julia, and illustrated by the hugely talented Charlotte Voake, and it was so good to be able to familiarise Charlotte with the original poem, so brilliantly reprinted by Bloomsbury.

So in a slightly disjointed turn of events, this book came out first but we're reviewing it second (now that a special edition with storytelling CD - read by Julia herself - comes with the book) and it's a sequel to the original poem? With us so far? Nope I'm completely lost too.

"The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat" reintroduces us to Owl, Pussycat and a cast of characters popping in for cameos from Edward Lear's other amazing nonsense poems (which we've recently been enjoying through Lear's brilliant poetry collections).

The story concerns the theft of the Pussycat's wedding ring, which was carefully tied around her tail - but stolen by a naughty crow. The Owl and the Pussycat once more set off - this time in a beautiful green balloon - to track down the wedding ring, on a high adventures across land and sea - to the Chankly Bore and beyond!

The new treatment works wonderfully in all but a few places, where the repetition taken from lines in the original poem doesn't quite 'fit' for us, and seems to jar a bit when reading aloud.

It is inventive stuff though as you'd expect from Julia, and Charlotte's illustrations are wondrous. It's also rather nice to be able to sit back and let Julia read the story to us in her wonderful rumbling tones full of excitement and passion for the poem and her own treatment of it.

Charlotte's best bit: The wonderful tea party to round off the tale

Daddy's Favourite bit: The dong with the luminous nose!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Bloomsbury Publishing)

Having previously collaborated on "The Further Adventures of The Owl and the Pussycat", Julia Donaldson takes a back seat to write the foreword for a rather lovely version of Edward Lear's classic children's poem, again with illustrations by Charlotte Voake.

Reading Julia's foreword brought back happy memories of first discovering Lear's poems thanks to my first English teacher, who was extremely passionate and enthusiastic about Lear's work (understandably so). So now the duty passes to me to introduce Charlotte to Lear's amazing word-worlds and fabulous characters, a task made easy with a fantastic book like this.

"The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat" begins the poem, and children are instantly drawn in. As Julia Donaldson so rightly says in the introduction, the book has such a sense of wonder and the start of an adventure from the outset, and if there's one thing children instantly engage with it's the thought that a book is going to take them on a grand quest.

Charlotte Voake's characterisations are as perfect as before, and her gift for imbuing her illustrations with such expression and movement really suits the poem perfectly, setting each scene with brilliant clarity.

We both read the poem through (Charlotte coped admirably with Lear's often tongue-twisting nonsense names, perhaps years of talking about Tombliboos and Ninky-Nonks have stood her in good stead).

She did wonder why I still can't seem to get through the book without a schoolboy titter or two (you know why). This is a really lovely follow up to "The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat" (which is a book we really ought to get round to reviewing on here, we borrowed it from the library a while ago and it slipped through our review schedules somehow).
A perfect homage to a literary genius, and an extremely good way to get your child interested in rhymes and poetry.

Charlotte's best bit: She loved the wedding scene, with the wise old turkey on the hill

Daddy's Favourite bit: A poem that elicits such delight, such a sense of wonder and adventure, utterly timeless and still as brilliant as when I first read it, probably at the same age Charlotte is now.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Picture Puffin)

It's always rather superb when our planned reviews are topical, or segue nicely with something that's being tweeted about. As the excellent "Play by the Book" discusses the secret lives of cats, we were putting the finishing touches to our thoughts and impressions on Charlotte Voake's excellent 'Ginger and the Mystery Visitor'.

Charlotte is an absolute master of peeking into the psyche of our feline friends. As we're absolute dyed-in-the-wool cat people, we love it when someone precisely nails cat-like behaviour in their books.

Ginger and the Kitten live rather a charmed life. Always warm, always well fed, and they enjoy each other's company (very rare for cats!) so when a mysterious visitor peeks through the window at them one day, they wonder who the newcomer is.

The rather cheeky so-and-so goes one step further when one day Ginger and the Kitten find the miscreant lovingly licking their cat bowls clean.

Ginger and Kitty's clever owner comes up with a plan. She attaches a note to the cat's collar and sends it off on its merry way. The note says "Do I belong to Anyone?" and they wait patiently to see what happens next with the mystery moggy...

The rest of the story is yours to discover. There's so much charm and so many knowing nods to cats and cat owners in this book. I loved the expressions that Charlotte uses (the cat staring through the window, absolutely spot-on) and the book's a brilliant demonstration that even something that looks fairly classical and (some might even rudely say) old-fashioned can be utterly absorbing, entertaining and loved to bits by today's children (the book's only 2 years old btw - it just has the look and feel of the sort of books I remember as a child, a really nice touch and it works beautifully here).

Charlotte's best bit (apart from recognising her name on the cover): Kitten. But she asked why kitten didn't actually seem to do much except snuggle! (Answer - kittens do that, a lot).

Daddy's favourite bit: The cat facial expressions are so perfect, they almost make me giggle out loud. Charlotte Voake absolutely nails them every time!

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