Welcome to our first Read It Daddy Editorial (ReaditTorial) of 2017 and a subject that, as ever, was inspired by Charlotte and one of those odd little family moments that cropped up as we languished in the 'Twixmas' (between Christmas and New Year) holiday period.

Time off from work is a rare enough occurrence and it always has me questioning what I do for a living and why I do it (beyond the obvious necessity to pay the mortgage, the bills, eat once in a while and put clothes on our backs - that sort of thing).

An even rarer thing is for us to all be sitting in one room all at the same time all watching a TV programme but you probably know exactly how it is when the excesses of christmas food and rubbish weather outside mean that there's really nothing nicer than curling up on the settee watching the idiot box.

We were watching "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" which was basically a spoof play (Pantomime! Oh yes it is!) the BBC televised off the back of a successful West End run. My wife and I had vetted it the night before and passed it fit for consumption by Charlotte, who loves the kind of crazy physical humour that was in the play - even if most of the slightly dodgier jokes sailed straight over her head.

The reason for this article though wasn't specifically to do with the play, more to do with my expectations of what Charlotte would find funny vs what she actually did.

I expected her to laugh her head off at the various accidents (owchy though most of them were) and some of the slightly riskier stuff (people's trousers falling down usually elicits hoots of laughter surely?)

But the things that actually made her laugh were far more unexpected. Relating this back to children's books, it's made me doubly appreciate those folk who've made a successful career out of making children laugh through books - particularly books where illustrations are kept to a minimum and you've got to rely on your command of the English Language (or a durned good translator for overseas markets) to keep your audience entertained.

Now, we've said before that many folk hugely underestimate how easy it'll be to write for children. Write ANYTHING for children, not just comedy.

Aside from books that take the easy route of applying dirty buckets full of toilet humour slathered on thicker than the fatbergs floating in a Victorian sewer system, books that subtly tweak the funny bones of a young audience are truly a marvel to behold.

It probably explains the recent phenomenon of various 'grown-up' comic actors and writers turning
their hand to writing children's novels.

David Walliams is the obvious choice as his books seem to be rapidly nipping at the heels of Roald Dahl's legacy of making kids laugh and grimace at the same time.

We've also seen stuff by Russell Brand, David Baddiel and Julian Clary make a tidy sum for author and publisher alike. Christian O'Connell is also joining the hallowed ranks of comedy writers and comedians ready to tackle the trickiness of writing funny stuff for kids too with his new book "Radio Boy" (coming to a blog near you soon!)


David Baddiel, author of the fantastic "The Parent Agency"  nicely summed this up in a recent interview, tapping into what's essentially driving a hugely successful children's book market at the moment, where the crossover between adult readers and child readers is increasingly blurring into a demographic that's hugely difficult to just comfortably categorise and summarise with something as blunt and simple as age group ratings (which, like David, I really don't think are in any way effective in their current form as anything more useful than a loose guideline).

With David's books, there were brilliant comic touches in there that were obviously aimed at my age group (possibly thanks to David Baddiel being a mere 4 years older than me so probably growing up through most of the cultural revolutions I was lucky enough to grow up through as well) which of course leads to great parent-child interaction as you try to explain something that happened to you in your own childhood.

He does dip into toilet territory too, let's face it, you're always going to opt for an easy chuckle or two when you're writing a book, just to ensure that you cover as wide an audience for your books as possible. But subtle comedy is something else, and something that he achieves particularly well, thanks to characters which you can obviously trace back to real actual people he's known throughout his life.

Making children laugh also seems to involve a huge bucketful of self-deprecation, because kids love folk who can be modest or even prepared to make themselves look completely silly in order to provide some giggles.

Some authors plainly don't get this (Sorry Russell B, there's no room for a colossal ego if you're writing for kids, they just do not buy that stuff nor are they as impressed by it as certain adults seem to be). Others take it to extremes and just end up locked in a loop of silliness that just doesn't work for a broad cross section, but may find an audience amongst kids who aren't in it for the thinkies.

So like a great many things to do with children's literature, it appears to be a finely tuned balancing act. In my limited experience, if I couldn't even write something nor predict something that would make my daughter laugh, it makes me wonder whether it'd ever be worth bothering trying to write something that would tick the ticklish boxes for a whole world full of kids.

"Snottydink" - If you're able to say that without rolling your eyes you're a better person than I am!

Last week, The BBC's "The Apprentice" programme took on the world of children's picture book publishing and came away with...

As the scales begin to tip firmly in the favour of chapter books for Charlotte, it's almost inevitable that there'll be a crossover point where she will spot books on our shelves and want to read them herself or have them read to her.

The Harry Potter series is one such set of books, which have held Charlotte's interest after watching one or two bits of the early movies (and only the early ones, mind you - the later ones really need to wait a few more years before I'll let her loose on them). She wanted to know more about the books and so recently we started to read them at bedtimes.

Charlotte is 7 - and really this editorial sneakingly broaches a subject that absolutely bakes my noodle. The subject of age ratings on books, which quite often make no sense to us whatsoever. "Here's a great picture book series for ages 5-8" a press release will proclaim. When we dive into the book we very quickly realise that the age group 5-8 is one hell of a long time and possibly the time in a child's life where their reading ability rapidly changes and develops the most.

Age ratings seem to be used to describe reading ability, and again I take issue with anything that tries to neatly pigeonhole a child's ability to fully engage or soak up a book's content, or to struggle with it not through non-recognition of the words or intent that make up the story, but purely because it's really not for them. I've seen Charlotte (who I believe has a very good level of reading ability and skill) struggle with a book that she should be breezing through - only for me to take a closer look at the book and find it the most turgid load of tummy rubbish imaginable. No fault of the child's reading ability, but entirely the fault of the editor or publisher that let it loose in the first place (I would say author but the assumption for a commercially published book is that an editor would have correctly gauged a book's suitability for publication if it was aimed at a specific reader level).

Age groupings on books for children (groupings rather than ratings) that follow the national curriculum recommendations or perhaps a reading scheme's framework can be frustrating to follow for readers with ability, yet they are structured to ensure that the gradual process of learning to read and learning to cope with the complexities of the English language are appropriately tested and matched. We don't often see this happen in books that children read for fun, so it makes me wonder why books below a certain threshold have any sort of age groupings at all?

How old should a child be before they're let loose on J.K. Rowling's works? The real answer is "When they're emotionally well equipped enough to deal with the story's content" - which for Charlotte is certainly at her age for the early books, and maybe 5-6 years for the last 3 or 4.

Having the chance to revisit the books through her eyes (having read them many many times myself independently) it has been a hell of a buzz to experience the sheer joy of getting to know a set of book characters who have (in no small part) been responsible for a colossal upsurge of interest in learning to read for sheer pleasure amongst children and teens. Rowling got the balance so absolutely right, ensuring that the Harry Potter books contained plenty to engage children across all genders, classes and races. Her characters are not perfect in any way, they have human frailties and flaws. Her good guys and gals are good but not beyond breaking the rules when they feel they need to. Her bad guys and gals are thoroughly rotten, but there's always the faint hope that underneath their dark exteriors they've got an unshakeable faith that they're doing the right thing. Her truly bad guys and gals make you understand that sometimes evil serves no greater purpose than being the measure of darkness that a story requires to set the baseline against.

You know you're doing something right as a parent when your child can spend an entire Saturday carrying around a twig they've found on the ground, pausing momentarily to shake it at a tree shouting "Expelliarmus" or "Expecto Patronum" but you really know you've done the right thing as a parent when another person (in this case an adult) can walk up to them and say "Is that your wand?"

In answer to the question posed in the header of this editorial, the right time is when you as a parent think your child is ready to deal with the highs and lows of a true rollercoaster of a story, not when an age rating tells you otherwise.

Edit: There's an absolutely brilliant book-by-book guide to the Harry Potter series and their suitability for school grades on Mrs N's highly educational and fantastically written blog. Go check it out!

I was bullied at school. Throughout Middle School and Senior School I was bullied, in fact one of the main reasons I left school earlier than planned was because of bullying.

Since school, I'm very lucky to have only encountered bullying a handful of times - in scenarios where mechanisms existed to address it and counter it. I'm acutely aware of how sensitive an issue it is, and as a parent I have a keen interest in promoting anti-bullying measures and a very keen interest in seeing anti-bullying messages crop up in more children's books.

When you're being bullied, it feels like no one can help you. Certainly not at the moment it's happening, and sometimes not for a long time afterwards either.

Sometimes, friends don't want to pitch in and help because they don't want to be drawn into the cycle of bullying themselves.

Parents often don't understand the severity of bullying and quite often dismiss it as 'kids being kids' (particularly amongst boys but increasingly amongst girls too). Teachers and schools back in my day also took a fairly weak stance on bullying (in my case at least) though thankfully that is no longer the case.

When I was a child, the library was probably the safest place to be for someone like me - bullies never went there. I liked books as an escape, and children's books quite often featured bullies 'getting their comeuppance', karma kicking in or some magical happenstance that would redress the balance in favour of the victim rather than the bully, and of course I ate those stories up.

I remember thinking about the bullies in Roald Dahl books - who always seemed to end up coming a cropper thanks to the key character's magical abilities or newly adopted skills. The bully would be turned into some horrific creature, or end up shrunk to the size of a mouse or any number of other unfortunate fates and the story would often leave it at that. Very rarely did a story tackle the aftermath for bullies or their victims, the story was nearly always wrapped up neatly and nicely.

Generally in modern tales, we quite often see the bully taking on a change of heart and befriending the victim, or somehow being served such a valuable lesson that they completely change their character almost overnight. In rare cases you see a bully turn into a friend because the victim ends up 'rescuing' them in some way. In the scope of a children's story, perhaps this is the best we can hope for - that once again there's a neat resolution that ties everything up nicely and everyone lives happily ever after, but for the kids who are living a daily nightmare because of bullying, it's not really a great deal of help.

As children get older, and quite often as bullying can become more serious, books and stories often take a darker turn but again very few books seem to evolve beyond the picture book stage of bully redemption or karma finally seeing them come to a sticky end. So what could change this for the better? What can be done to demonstrate that bullying is a far more complex issue than just 'good vs evil'.

I've only seen a few books (notably the Harry Potter series, and arch-nasty Draco Malfoy) where a bully's background is explored and the reasons for their behaviour become apparent and traceable.  Perhaps traced back to their parents, or their home environment, or perhaps even an external influence that is beyond either of those.

Sometimes in books we'll see boorish parents' behaviour reflected in their offspring's own traits (again back to the Harry Potter series and Dudley Dursley) but it does feel that there's a vital link missing in the way bullying is portrayed and dealt with in children's fiction.

Perhaps it's an impossible wish. Perhaps it's just too far beyond the scope of children's books to be able to effectively tackle this thorniest of subjects, but I would desperately love to hear about any books that make a durned good attempt at it, particularly from folk who use or have used those books in therapy when dealing with bullying, either for themselves or for others.

Russell Brand. Soon to put his own spin on the Pied Piper of Hamelyn along with the awesome Chris Riddell

Once again it's been an absolutely stunningly good year for children's books and every week we've struggled with the dilemma of which to choose as our "Book of the Week".

Our Top 50 Children's Books of the Year aren't necessarily books that have been released in 2013, but are the books that we just couldn't put down, that were demanded again and again, and quite rightly ended each week in the supreme top slot of Book of the Week. We'll still be carrying on this tradition in 2014 when the blog has a bit of a reboot, but here's our fabulous fifty, listed by month and linking through to the original reviews.

Phew, it's a huge list! On with the show!

January

Beauty and the Beast by Ursula Jones and Sarah Gibb (Orchard Books)

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg (Andersen Children's Books)

Our Big Blue Sofa by Tim Hopgood (Macmillan Children's Books)

The Princess and the Peas by Caryl Hart and Sarah Warburton (Nosy Crow)

February

Eric by Shaun Tan (Templar Books)

Monkey Nut by Simon Rickerty (Simon and Schuster)

The Rescue Princesses - The Secret Promise by Paula Harrison (Nosy Crow)

I Really Want to Eat a Child by Sylviane Donnio and Dorothee De Monfried (Hodder)

The King of Space by Jonny Duddle (Templar Books)

March

Ding Dong Gorilla by Michelle Robinson and Leonie Lord (Orchard Books)

The Dark by Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen (Orchard Books)

La Sirenita by Oriol Izquerdo and Max (Chronicle Books)

The Cloud by Hannah Cumming (Child's Play)

Sidney, Stella and the Moon by Emma Yarlett (Templar Books)

Red Butterfly by Deborah Noyes and Sophie Blackall (Candlewick Press)

April 

Zephyr Takes Flight by Steve Light (Candlewick Press)

Cozy Classics by Jack and Holman Wang (Simply Read Books)

Bubble and Squeak by James Mayhew and Clara Vulliamy (Orchard Books)

May

Gum Girl Volume 1 by Andi Watson (Walker Books)

Hildafolk by Luke Pearson (Flying Eye Books)

Monsters and Legends by Davide Call and Gabriella Giandelli (Flying Eye Books)

If I Built a Car by Chris Van Dusen (Penguin USA)

Zed the Zebra (64 Zoo Lane) by An Vombraut (Hodder Children's Books)

Hilda and the Midnight Giant by Luke Pearson (Flying Eye Books)

June

Father and Daughter Tales by Josephine Evetts-Secker and Helen Cann (Barefoot Books)

Splash! Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke and Lauren Tobia (Walker Books)

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Wild by Emily Hughes (Flying Eye Books)

July

Mixed Up Nursery Rhymes by Hilary Robinson and Liz Pichon (Hodder Children's Books)

The Storm Whale by Benji Davies (Simon and Schuster)

Laika the Astronaut by Owen Davey (Templar Publishing)

Little Red Riding Hood by Alison Jay and Katie Cotton (Templar Publishing)

Help a Hamster by Hilary Robinson and Mandy Stanley (Copper Tree Books)

August

Mr Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown (Macmillan Children's Books)

I Hate Picture Books by Timothy Young (Schiffer Publishing Ltd)

Hey Presto by Nadia Shireen (Jonathan Cape PB Ltd)

September 

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew DeWalt and Oliver Jeffers (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Dixie O'Day in the Fast Lane by Shirley Hughes and Clara Vulliamy (Bodley Head)

The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Beware of Girls by Tony Blundell (Picture Puffin)

Walking your Octopus by Brian Kesinger (Baby Tattoo)

October 

The Opposite by Tom Macrae and Elena Odriozola (Andersen Children's Books)

Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space by Dr Dominic Walliman and Ben Newman (Flying Eye Books)

The Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat by Coral Rumble and Charlotte Cooke (Parragon Books)

My Mum Has X-Ray Vision by Angela McAllister and Alex T. Smith (Scholastic Books)

November

Sir Mouse to the Rescue by Dirk Nielandt and Marjolein Pottie (Book Island)

Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke Pearson (Flying Eye Books)

Isabel's Noisy Tummy by David McKee (Andersen Children's Books)

The Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan (Hodder Children's Books)

Have You Seen Who's Moved In Next Door to Us by Colin McNaughton (Walker Books)

December

Murilla Gorilla and the Lost Parasol by Jennifer Lloyd and Jacqui Lee (Simply Read Books)

The Midnight Library by Kazuno Kohara (Macmillan Children's Books)

Aunt Amelia by Rebecca Cobb ()

"Black Dog" by Levi Pinfold (Templar Publishing)

Without a doubt, one of the biggest draws for parents and children seeking out new books to enjoy together is the all-important cover. Without the luxury of being able to include a ream of end-paper notes, a children's book often has to sell itself using the skills of the illustrator and the designers who will put the book together.

In our experience, the "book hook" is what we're looking for. As you've probably seen on the blog, Charlotte selects most of our library stack books herself and will often pick through books looking purely at the cover art to make her decision (while her reading skills are at the level they are, this is her best cue as to what the book is about and whether she's going to like it).

Of course, once she knows the title and once I give her an outline of what the book is about, she'll either "Keep or Bin" that particular book. Often though, it's the book hook that does the trick and will ensure that a book stays in our loan stack.

When we're out browsing in our favourite local independent bookseller, the same rules apply and sometimes they're often short enough on space that we only see the spines (note to authors / illustrators, please avoid blank spines - not only does this mean we're likely to skip your book entirely in a shelved stack to select from, it also means it's going to look a bit poo when it's at home on our own shelves and we're frantically searching for it amongst a ton of other books proudly showing off their titles!)

Their "recommended" section usually features brilliant eye-catching choices so it's always the first 'go to' - But for books we pull out of the shelves ourselves, once again the cover is the star unless it's something we've previously read up on.

Let's take a look at a few covers (Classics and new stars on the block) Do they grab you? Let's take a look at a few...

"Where the Wild Things Are" (Maurice Sendak). Brilliant hook, and lead in to a much-loved classic

The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien). This was the first Hobbit cover I saw and it had an electrifying effect on me as a child. I wanted to know all about the world Tolkien had created and had drawn on that cover.

The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis). This is a fairly new treatment for the anthology and the one we have at home. So beautifully painted and mysterious looking.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling). Though this is the US cover, I think this is actually really brilliant. Why didn't we get this one!

Bad Island (Doug TenNapel). An example of the sort of cover Charlotte would instantly get hooked by. Scary stories, dark and foreboding cover - instant win!

Big Red Lollipop (Rukhsana Khan and Sophie Blackall) Another example of an instant win. Such a bold, eyecatching cover, a character Charlotte would identify with, and brilliant use of colour. Dive in!

Breadcrumbs (Anne Ursu). Another example of a book hook (a bit like the Levi Pinfold cover at the start of the book). Sometimes less is more. Begs you to investigate further. Contrast with the cover below...

Yummy (Lucy Cousins). Brilliant, straightforward, fantastic.

Anne of Green Gables (Lucy Maud Montgomery). This is a fairly old cover of a classic and well-loved book. But oh my goodness, look what they replaced it with below...

Look, I know there's a drive to get more boys (and men) to read books but surely there's a better way ;) Boy are they in for a huge disappointment!

Got a favourite children's book cover? Leave a comment (and a link if possible) below, we'd love to see them!