This is another #Booky100Keeper that has become a colossal part of the family's vocabulary.

From an early age, C has really hated being stared at by other kids, particularly when she's eating. So when we first read "The Bear Who Stared" by Duncan Beedie, the book could have been tailor-made for her.

It's the story of a bear who really doesn't mean any harm, but rather rudely, can't help but stare. He stares at strangers, he stares at friends, he even puts people off their lovely picnic lunch by staring.

He just can't help himself!

Soon though the bear realises that his natural curiosity is unwelcome, and after much soul-searching, realises there are better ways to make friends than goggling at 'em!

The reason this book has been a keeper, and the reason it's so well loved is because it's now C's weapon against kids who stare. Every time it happens, in a loud voice she'll turn to us and say "Hey Daddy / Mummy. Do you remember that book, oh what was it called now. You know, the one about the bear. The bear who couldn't stop staring. Oh what was the name of it?" - to much amusement on our part, and complete ignorance on the part of the starer (probably, unless they have excellent taste and have picked up Duncan's book but learned absolutely nothing from it).

We feel it's also worth mentioning another keeper, purely because this one will get you RIGHT IN THE HEART EVERY TIME...

"The Last Chip" is the story of a pigeon. Now, normally I despise and loathe pigeons with an intense burning hatred (we are plagued with them where we live, waking us up every morning at 4 AM making that ridiculous noise they make when they're feeling a bit fruity) but the pigeon in this book plucks at our heart strings something rotten (thanks largely to Duncan's gift of creating the most brilliant characterful illustrations in his books).

Percy is small, and finds it difficult to find food amongst the sprawling city buildings where he makes his home. Other pigeons are big bullies and force Percy to scratch for the merest scraps. As he gets hungrier and hungrier, Percy decides to make one last effort to find a place to live where he will find lots to eat.

He almost uses his last ounce of strength doing so, but on arrival at the seaside Percy finds life is even tougher - thanks to nasty seagulls who have staked out their territory and don't want a scruffy little pigeon muscling in on their patch.

Thankfully at the last moment Percy finds a friend, a man in a similar circumstance - with not much to his name, but perhaps a last chip to let Percy finally have a feast and get some of his strength back. By this time in the book we're utter wrecks - and I'm sure that any author / illustrator, on hearing that their work has such a huge emotional effect on their readers, is secretly quite chuffed. So they should be!

Original review links: 

The Lumberjack's Beard by Duncan Beedie (Templar Publishing)

ReadItDaddy's Super-Special Children's Book Award Picture Book of the Week - Week Ending 8th March 2019: "The Last Chip" by Duncan Beedie (Templar Publishing)

ReadItDaddy's Second Picture Book of the Week - Week Ending 8th February 2019: "Molly's Moon Mission" by Duncan Beedie (Templar Publishing)

The Bear who Stared by Duncan Beedie (Templar Publishing)

The ReadItDaddy Podcast - January 2017

A man who is no stranger to our Book of the Week slot has very kindly provided some World Book Day inspiration for everyone, with a fantastic guest post detailing some of the thought processes behind our recent BOTW winner "Molly's Moon Mission".

So with a huge thanks to Duncan Beedie, time for a Blog Takeover!!

Whenever I approach writing a picture book I have a tendency to do things 'ass-backwards' (if you'll excuse the parlance!) I am more than happy to admit that illustrating comes far more naturally to me than the actual writing which is why, whenever the first seed of an idea germinates, I usually dive right in with character designs, spread compositions, and even the cover design before the story has been fully written. This is no doubt attributed to the fact that I worked in animation for 14 years - a particularly visual form of storytelling - before I made the transition into children's books.

Working on my latest book, Molly's Moon Mission,was no different. If anything, I was even more eager to leap into the visual design of the story as it was to feature an all time favourite topic of mine – space!I was a pretty typical kid of the 80s growing up, fuelled by a healthy consumption of pop culture and sherbet dib-dabs. I marvelled at films such as Star Wars and Battle Beyond The Stars, and TV shows like Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica (yes, the old one). My bedroom walls were mostly adorned with posters of the NASA space shuttle, while luminescent stars and moons were scattered across my ceiling. Even as an 8 year old, I remember being somewhat obsessed with the aesthetic of space exploration – the vivid colours of the astronauts' mission patches and flight suits, the beige and grey padded interiors of the ships from TV and film. It should therefore come as no surprise that my childhood obsessions paid dividends when collating the colour palette and visual styling of Molly's Moon Mission. One of the first things I did was take a trip down memory lane (or in this case Google) and revisit the imagery of the sci-fi films of my youth and beyond. The first thing that stood out was that astronauts seem to like orange... a lot. Blue too, but mostly orange. So it was fairly straightforward to devise the colour scheme of the eponymous heroine. The more eagle-eyed among you may have also noticed a not so subtle homage to space Lego on Molly's t-shirt. Another big part of my childhood was computer games. We had a Commodore 64, and nothing excited me more than popping a cassette into the tape deck and waiting the requisite 35 minutes for a game to load, before it promptly stuttered to a halt in a screenful of jagged pixels halfway through the first level. When devising the night time illustrations for MollyI decided to give the skies horizontal stripes instead of smooth gradients, akin to the pixel art of my C64 games.

As a 40-something father to a young child, I am aware that many of the parents who read my stories to their kids will probably share the same childhood influences as myself. For this reason, I like to scatter a few crumbs of nostalgia here and there as a sort of fragile nod of acknowledgement across the sometimes terrifying void of parenthood. Scant consolation, I know, when the bedtime routine isn't going quite as planned. But being reminded of a childhood toy or film can at least soften the blow of being booted repeatedly in the face by a writhing toddler as they settle down for sleepy-byes.

On the theme of revisiting my childhood, taking Molly's Moon Missionon tour has allowed me to fulfil one particular childhood ambition – it's given me the excuse to buy my very own orange aviation suit to wear at book events. The me from 1984 would be doing zero gravity somersaults about this. I'm not ashamed to admit that I get a rather adolescent pang of excitement when I zip myself into it, and like to feel that I have at least an inkling of what it must have felt like for Yeager, Armstrong et al when they were getting suited and booted before a death defying mission. Plus it has the most incredible array of pockets – six of them just for pens! 

This week's super-special Children's Book Award Picture Book of the Week is a fantastic book we've covered before (January 2018 to be precise) when it won a coveted "Picture Book of the Week" award. 

Kids obviously also have excellent taste when it comes to fantastic picture books, as now we're happy to join the Federation of Children's Book Groups 2019 Children's Book Awards to talk about Duncan Beedie's fantastic shortlisted book "The Last Chip" and to once again let it completely break our resolve not to be big crybabies.

When we're on the lookout for fabulous picture books, we often look for those 'hooks' that pull you straight into a story. Sometimes the hook can be the storyline itself, sometimes it can be something unexpected in the early stages of the book. Sometimes it's a particular theme or issue that hte author / illustrator has set out to explore, and they nail it right from the get go. 

Duncan has that gift for creating those hooks - putting together the most beautiful stories and illustrations to impart simple but heartfelt messages of hope, and right now let's face it, that's exactly the sort of 'book balm' we need. 

So without further ado, let's meet Percy, the modest star of "The Last Chip". 

Now, we're definitely not what you could describe as "Pigeon lovers" by any stretch of the imagination (their cooing early in the mornings at this time of year drives us absolutely batty at home) but you just can't help but fall for Percy as soon as you meet him.

He's such a tiny little fellah, and every morning he dutifully turns up at the train station ready to peck up any crumbs that commuters might drop on their way to work.

The big problem (or should we say BIG FEATHERY PROBLEMS) come in the form of a gang of unruly bullying pigeons who always greedily bundle in every time there's any food around. They squeeze poor Percy out (one in particular made us cackle, a rather ornery looking pigeon with those horrible missing / stumpy feet you sometimes see pigeons in London hobbling around on - EEKS!)

Glorious, gorgeous book this.

Soon the tiny little pidge realises he needs to look further afield for his grub. He tries the park, but the ducks are nasty and don't like anyone muscling in on their pond / birdseed racket.

He flies as far as the coast. Poor Percy doesn't even find any grub there as nasty piratical seagulls are having none of this landlubber trying to peck up their fish-and-chip suppers!

We lolled at the stall names here. Another utterly beautiful spread.

So what will Percy do? Weak, starving and absolutely exhausted he sadly heads back to the city - and finds an unexpected friend and thankfully finally gets to share supper with someone who gives him their last chip, even though they're down on their luck themselves.

Oh it was that bit - it just had us blubbing like babies. Such a gorgeous warm message and if you're not bawling by the end of this book, you have no heart. We both still think this is Duncan's best work yet (certainly the illustrations are luxuriously gorgeous, I mean just LOOK at them!) - But C pointed out that we're STILL not allowed to like this more than "The Bear Who Stared", another of Duncan's books that has worked its way into our everyday lives, being referenced every single time we see one of those rude little girls or boys who can't stop staring. 

Worth noting that part of the proceeds from this book have been donated to The Trussell Trust - a very worthy cause that fits beautifully with the book's core message and story. 

What a lovely gesture and just one more reason why you need this book in your life.

C's best bit: The evil stump-footed pigeon who stalks the railway station. Eeesh!

Daddy's favourite bit: A beautiful message, utterly amazing and gorgeous illustrations, the tender warm heart of a truly lovely story and yes, we did blub. Wonderful work, Duncan!

"The Last Chip" by Duncan Beedie is out now, published by Templar (kindly supplied for review). 

Don't forget to check out the other 'stops' on the Children's Book Award Top Ten Tour! 

Our second Picture Book of the Week is another absolute treat from one of our fave picture book authors.

"Molly's Moon Mission" by Duncan Beedie is the tale of a little moth with big dreams.

From the genius behind "The Bear who Stared" - a book that we STILL talk about even to this day, you're probably expecting something rather special. This most definitely is!

The tale begins with Molly, a moth who lives at the back of the wardrobe with her moth family.

During the day she's an ordinary moth who pitches in helping her family with the chores. Looking after moth grubs, all the while dreaming of her grand plan.

For at night, Molly dreams of jetting to the moon, that amazing glowing globe in the night sky. As Molly looks up, she dreams of becoming an astro-moth!

But it's not an easy task, how can a tiny little moth go all that way? She's going to need a lot of help, pluck and determination.

Duncan has once again created a book that worms its way into your thoughts and musings, as the underlying message of believing in yourself and following your dreams is beautifully described.

Molly daydreams about space, following astronauts and astro-dogs into the inky blackness!

We loved all the little touches and homages to space travel in this, so many gorgeous spreads as Molly's story unfolds.

(Gotta say, that lovely little nod to classic Lego Space figures also completely won us over!)

Utterly adorable! Go Molly!

Does Molly achieve the dizzy heights she aspires to? You'll have to read the book to find out!

Sum this book up in a sentence: A gorgeous tale of a mighty little moth with big dreams and equally huge determination to see her mission through to the end.

"Mollys Moon Mission" by Duncan Beedie is out now, published by Templar (kindly supplied for review). 

Oh goodness me, picture books once again have the power to completely break our resolve not to be big crybabies with this beautifullty heartfelt tale from Duncan Beedie. "The Last Chip" is our first Picture Book of the Week this week...

After a recent brush with growing a beard, it was almost spookily timed that we'd end up receiving a new picture book to review that's all about face fuzz...

We love books that become part of our everyday conversations - and book characters that also worm their way into our collective consciousness when certain things happen at home or out and about...