Let's be perfectly honest, Sardines aren't normally the sort of thing you associate with Valentine's Day, or a love story. Yet here we are on the day when the card industry goes completely crazy, florists gambol up and down their shops with reckless abandon and every restaurant for 10 square miles around where you live is booked solid, extolling the virtues of a glorious children's book about those super-gross little fish.

Grandad Lolo LOVES Sardines. He loves them baked, fried or quite possibly even raw. Grandma Lola absolutely hates sardines. The smell of them, the look of them and most definitely the taste of them. Like Jack Sprat and his wife, Lolo and Lola lead a merry existence in blissful acceptance of each other's dietary habits.

One fateful day, Lola realises that the little sardine shack is all out of sardines and there's nothing for Lolo's dinner. Being a bit of a dab hand (pun intended) with a fishing rod, Lola sets out to catch Lolo some supper - but due to an unfortunate nautical mishap, Lola ends up flying straight down the throat of a friendly octopus! EEK!

Trapped in the Octopus's belly, Lola realises that the place is like a little house, complete with a stove and furnishings but the one thing it doesn't have is any food - other than (yep, you've guessed it) Sardines! Loads of sardines, here there and everywhere!

Lola's tummy rumbles, and she realises that she's so hungry that she'll try anything. She holds her nose and gulps down one sardine, then another, and then before long she is actually enjoying these fishy little treats. She sets to work making all sorts of Sardine-based comestibles (Sardine pizza anyone? Actually that pizza made US want to try sardines!)

Lolo comes home and wonders where poor Lola has gone. Can Lolo find his missing missus?

Adorable from wonderful kissy heart-shaped fish-tail endpaper to endpaper, we utterly devoured "Sardines of Love" and realised something - love stories like this don't feature enough in children's books! What a blissful book for valentine's day (and hey it's also international book giving day too, so why not give someone a treat by buying them a copy of this!)

Charlotte's best bit: Charlotte loved the ever-present Octopus (and wanted to know why he had a window in his tummy!)

Daddy's Favourite bit: What an adorable tale, a wonderful love story that might even convince you that sardines are the food of love!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Child's Play)

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The Adventures of Bernie and Flora by Annemie Berebrouckx

We loved Courtney Dicmas' fabulously noisy and colourful book "Harold Finds a Voice" so it's great to see what she got up to next, this time with a fishy tale to warm the cockles of your heart.

Stella is our kind of girl. Like Charlotte she's fun-loving, gutsy and determined - and what Stella wants more than anything else is to catch a fish. Not just any old fish, but the biggest fish in the ocean - The Great Googly Moogly.

This legendary fish is the stuff of a fisherman's dream. As long as a bus, as broad as a jumbo jet, The Great Googly Moogly is astounding - but can one little girl, even a little girl who was born to sail the seven seas achieve such a huge goal?

Courtney Dicmas' book is beautifully multi-layered, as the story unfolds and we learn more about Stella's determination and drive, we also learn about her heart - as big as a whale's. So when things take a rather surprising turn, and Stella finally meets The Great Googly Moogly we'll leave it to you to find out what happens.

We often read disheartening stories in the press about how few spirited female characters there are in children's books. How few role models for girls that don't rely on glamour and glitz to win the day. They are out there, believe us - we've found a lot of them and we're so happy to have found another in young Stella. We love the core message about loving animals, and respecting the planet's gorgeous and diverse wildlife, but then that's sort of what you expect from Courtney and Child's Play - they don't do wishy washy!

Charlotte's best bit: The Great Googly Moogly himself, a multi-coloured happy and huge old fish with a gigantic heart to match. Just like Stella's

Daddy's Favourite bit: An inspiring and colourful book layered beautifully, and full of inspiration for little girls and boys who love larger-than-life characters with hearts of gold.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Child's Play Publishing)

Wow! A sprightly 40 year old, and still as brilliant a book as it was when first published 40 years ago. Pam Adams' sublime version of the favourite (if slightly icky) nursery rhyme "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" is now available in several versions to celebrate the book's anniversary.

With each turn of the page, the old lady's bizarre diet is revealed. Children may know the rhyme well, but this retelling is utterly perfect, as each page features cutaways to show what that little old lady (with her pockets stuffed with sweeties) has been munching on!

It's easy to see why this book has lasted so well, and is still a brilliantly entertaining read - regardless of the age of your child. Charlotte loves the slightly gross and macabre, so I was tickled pink to see what her reaction to the book was. Our version retained the fabulous 'cutaway' bits (and the rather untimely end for the poor old dear) as the old lady scoffs through various animals, all to see off that rotten fly. Pam Adams' skill in producing a work so enduring laid such a brilliant foundation for a publishing house who have always been at the forefront of inclusive, energetic and original children's books.

Don't take our word for it though! If you want to win a copy, we're running a competition until the end of October to win a copy in one of three categories. All you need to do is come up with an amusing end to the line "There was an old lady who swallowed a...."

Check out our competition page here and some of the entries so far!

Charlotte's best bit: Unicorn Land, which is indeed as fabulous as you'd imagine a Unicorn's garden would be! Daddy's Favourite bit: It's crazy, surreal with a mouthful of a title and some serious nose thumbing at "The picture book rulebook" but who couldn't love it for that!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Child's Play )

The energy crisis can be solved overnight if someone ever finds an ingenious way of tapping toddler energy! In Carol Thompson's new range of fantastic board books for Child's Play (THE go-to for toddler books, in our opinion), there's a celebration of all the mischievous antics that toddlers are born to become experts in.

As you can tell from the titles...

• One Two Three...Crawl!
• One Two Three...Climb!
• One Two Three...Run!
• One Two Three...Jump!

There's a mood that Hannah Cumming's books puts us in. It's the sort of mood that also comes from wrapping up in a freshly made bed with a big fat fluffed up duvet, or the mood that stems from knowing that it snowed heavily the night before and the world is muted by a soft white covering, eradicating all the bumps and blemishes. Or perhaps the mood you drift lazily into when you've just made the most awesome cup of hot chocolate and floated a ton of marshmallows in it.

I think what we're trying to get across here is that we love Hannah's books very much, and we're very glad that we spotted "The Red Boat" in the library as we'd somehow previously missed it.

Posy, a fairly ordinary little girl - and her rather superb dog George, have moved to a new house. The house is so big, the garden is huge, the next door neighbours are strangers and there's also the prospect of starting a new school.

Naturally, Posy is a bit anxious - and despite George's "WOOFs" of reassurance, there's a lot to think about for a young mind.

Then Posy discovers something tucked away in the corner of the garden. A red boat - the gateway to daydreamed adventures, to pirate escapades or a voyage through the inky darkness of a perfectly clear night sky.

Posy's anxieties about the change in her world and her life are soon dissolved as her adventures in the fabulous red boat neatly segue with what's going on in the 'real world'. Staking a claim on her own bit of the house, meeting a ton of new friends at school and finding out that the next-door neighbours are actually lovely (and have a few bouncing yappy dogs of their own too) makes Posy feel much much better.

It's a touching little story, particularly pertinent if your children have perhaps moved schools or moved house - or are adapting to change. As ever with Hannah's books, this is utterly perfect to snuggle up at bedtime with - and also a great book to inspire you to build your own little red boat (mummy really won't mind you using the sofa cushions for this, I'm sure!) and sailing off on your own voyage of imagination. Utterly, utterly lovely.

Charlotte's best bit: Being a pirate girl - because if there's one thing Charlotte likes, it's dressing up as a pirate girl!

Daddy's favourite bit: Such a warm, snuggly and cosy book. We're so glad we finally tracked it down!

We're going to take you on a pictorial journey for this week's Book of the Week entry - another utter smasher from Hannah Cumming. In "The Cloud" the children in a schoolroom are as happy as can be, painting, drawing, cutting out and busying themselves in all the fantastic ways children do - all except one sad and forlorn newcomer who sits under a dark fuzzy cloud, ever so quietly and almost unnoticed.

The Cloud, a la Charlotte!

She doesn't go unnoticed for long. A little girl with flaxen hair and a sunny disposition (not unlike a certain other little girl with flaxen hair who is "The Boss" of this very book blog) decides to befriend the newcomer and see if she can get her to come out of her shell a bit.

The cloud persists, and through diligence and the most touching dedication, the girls become firm friends.

See how easy it can be, to turn a cloud into a...TREE!

What we loved about this book is the combination of the message that's core to the story, and also the fact that it inspired us to draw some brilliant pictures that are like Hannah's fantastic illustrations.

There's a great bit in the story that we won't spoil for you but if you feel the same way about this utterly charming and sublime book as we do, you'll soon be creating fantastic creatures like these...

A Zebraffe (or a Girebra perhaps?)

(loved this one) a cute Rabbitodile :)

Tricky one this, a Slothelephant!

We had some great conversations about a new girl who has just joined Charlotte's class at school and thanks to the book it was easy to describe how that girl is feeling being new. No cloud above her head, but right now she might like nothing better than to have a little girl come over and make friends with her and draw, paint and play together.

Charlotte's best bit: The children's drawings, including a rather lovely homage to a certain book by Eric Carle perhaps?

Daddy's favourite bit: As we've come to expect from Hannah and indeed from Child's Play, this is a book that's destined to become a modern classic, with the kind of beautifully told and wonderfully conveyed message that the very best of our children's book writing talent seem to make look so effortlessly easy. "The Cloud" should be in everyone's collection.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Child's Play)

"MUMMY, DADDY! I'M BORED!"

How often have we heard this plaintive cry echoing around ReadItDaddy Towers. Charlotte sitting in a room full of toys, with a shelf full of books - or walking through some of our brilliant local countryside as we drag ourselves out of the house for a much-needed walk.

In Jo Empson's follow up to the utterly divine ReadItDaddy Book of the Week "Rabbityness" Jo successfully taps into the psyche of a little girl who claims that "Nothing interesting ever happens to me, Never Ever!"

As we follow the little girl's journey through the story, it's fun to see how oblivious she is to all the things going on around her. Seeing Charlotte's delight as she sees the events in the story unfold was magical, and there's an utterly brilliant "snap" towards the end of the book that made her audibly gasp (in fact, that section - which I won't spoil for you - was definitely Charlotte's most favourite bit of the entire story!)

On our first read through, we were a bit "all at sea" with this because Rabbityness is such a very tough act to follow. But as we read and re-read it (and it was asked for several times by Charlotte - always a good sign), I think she recognised a bit of herself in the little girl in the story - and I definitely did. Jo's brilliant  way of getting behind the eyes of a child makes this something rather special, and the constant surprises and reveals throughout the story (including a fantastic fold-out end!) are a real joy.

Charlotte's best bit: I can't tell you, it'd spoil things too much - but near the end things get a bit dark :)

Daddy's favourite bit: An absolutely brilliant observation of child behaviour with a surprising and immersive little tale. Love it!

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

Blazing with colour, and a good dose of "parrotyness", Courtney Dicmas' debut children's picture book "Harold Finds a Voice" is a joyful (and very noisy) celebration of a rather special little feathery friend.

Harold is absolutely brilliant at mimicking the sounds he hears at his apartment. But Harold thinks that out there, in the wide wide world, there are more sounds to be heard, more noises to enjoy, a whole bustling metropolis filled with enchanting tones.

Harold seizes his chance one morning and flies out of the window, to come face to face (or should that be ear to ear) with a whole cacophony of different noises to emulate.

But something's troubling Harold. Deep down he wonders what his own voice is like. Surely he must have one?

Expertly told, beautifully illustrated and of the high quality we've come to expect from Child's Play, "Harold Finds a Voice" will delight children of all ages (and mums and dads will undoubtedly love making all the noises and sounds in the book as they read - well I did anyway!)

Charlotte's best bit: Harold's brilliant impression of a vacuum cleaner

Daddy's favourite bit: A jubilant and joy-filled debut, Courtney Dicmas really does know how to weave an attractive tale.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Child's Play International PLC)