Here's a neat twist on a story that has appeared in many different forms for generations. We rather love the idea of mixing in a bit of dino fun here though...

Jenny Colgan's endearing series continues with a special festive edition of her much loved "Polly and the Puffin" books, with fab illustrations from Thomas Docherty...

We love a fantastic and original detective yarn or two here on the blog, as you've probably noticed.

Doubly so if the detective in question is a mighty young lady who knows her own mind.

We're happy to share with you the new cover with art by super-talented Lisa Horton for "Rose Raventhorpe Investigates: Black Cats and Butlers" by Janine Beacham!

In the story, young Rose is drawn into a mystery as several butlers - including her own faithful man friday - are mysteriously murdered.

Rose must try and untangle a densely woven plot or two against the atmospheric backdrop of Yorke.

Can Rose get to the bottom of the mystery, before she too ends up like Argyle?

This stunning debut by Australian author Janine Beacham is definitely one for the curious, who love stories that are a little dark and a little different.

In Janine's own words, here's the story behind Rose Raventhorpe's debut adventure...



When I was a kid I found a competition on the back of a cereal box. WIN A BUTLER FOR A WEEK, it said. ‘Tell us why you would like a butler!’

It sounded fun. I asked my mum if I could enter. ‘A butler would never come here!’ she said.

We lived on a dairy farm in Western Australia. We had haybales, cows, chickens, swooping magpies, and poisonous snakes. It was great, but it was not butler-like territory. The idea of a butler cleaning our house, serving a posh dinner, and saying ‘yes, Madam,’ appealed to me. We didn’t have a lot of posh things.

So I entered the competition. I wrote about the butler being able to help my mother. It wasn’t a very good entry. I didn’t win.

But the idea stayed with me. What if a butler did come to a house like ours? What would he do? What would my ideal butler be like?

I imagined a butler called Heddsworth. He would be English, because all the butlers in books and TV and movies were English. He would be very polite. He would call me Miss. He would polish the ute, and feed the farm dog from a silver bowl. And, I decided, he would be an excellent swordsman and shot.

I tried to write a story about this, but it lacked something. What I liked most about Heddsworth was his duelling skills. And he had nobody to duel on a farm. So I put the story aside.

Many, many years later, I read the Harry Potter books. They were inspiring. If JK Rowling could make such a success of a book about wizards, maybe I could write about duelling butlers!

So I tried a new version of the story. This time I set it in Victorian England. I needed a plot, and a young protagonist. A murder mystery would do. A butler would be killed – the heroine’s butler.

I had a new story, but it STILL wasn’t all that good. What was missing?

I went on holidays to the UK, and a friend told me I should visit York. I did. As soon as I stepped off the bus into the city, I saw a cat statue on a wall. And I had an epiphany. This was where I would set the book! My heroine would be called Rose, because she was from York. The butlers would live in an alternative version of York. Yorke with an E!

I added grave-robbers, and a magician, and underground tunnels and cat statues with eerie powers. I rewrote and polished and thought and wrote. And the story that came out of a cereal box became my first published book.

We're not sure how we missed the first of these books, but we're catching up - so here's a double Book of the Week for the utterly adorable "Polly and the Puffin" and "Polly and the Puffin - The Stormy Day" by Jenny Colgan and Thomas Docherty...

Here's a bit of silliness that we couldn't resist. You will probably remember the scene in "Despicable Me" where Gru is reading to his new "adoptees" while they're playing up and blatantly not sleeping at bedtime until they've heard a story.

Gru comes up with this little masterpiece, a book with finger puppets - the three sleepy kittens.

A book was released not long after the original movie, and since then the book has been in and out of print a few times. With the resurgence of popularity in all things minion-shaped (and the release of Despicable Me 2) you can now obtain the book once again without paying those ridiculously exorbitant Ebay and Amazon prices.

Only...well here's a note of caution. If you have tiny babies, and they're just starting to show an interest in sitting on your lap while you read books - this is a brilliant little idea. You slide your fingers into the 'kitten' shapes on the book, and wiggle them around while telling the story of three sleepy kittens going about their daily business.

The quality of the book is pretty variable though. Cheap quality nylon kitties don't quite look as great as the ones in the movie, and although the illustrations are great, it's a bit of a bust for a six year old who loves the movie but isn't really at the stage of being entertained by daddy reading a 5 page story while wiggling his fingers around inside three bland looking puppets.

There are some fantastic Despicable Me story books from L & B for older readers but as we said earlier on in the review, your tinies - your really tinies - will find this book charming (and it's a board book so they can chew it or drool on it with little or no effect). The moral of this tale is that nothing looks as great in real life as it does in the movies :)

Charlotte's best bit: Kittens slurping milk and having their fur brushed

Daddy's Favourite bit: Even with my best Gru impression (which is a fairly easy thing for me to do, by the way, I certainly have the hairstyle for it) I couldn't really entertain Charlotte with this one - But it'll definitely be something to try out on my new niece in Cornwall next time we're visiting.

Charlie Merrick's Misfits by Dave Cousins (Oxford University Press)

Ever After High - The Unfairest of them All by Shannon Hale (Little, Brown)

Disaster Diaries - Aliens by R. McGeddon and Jamie Littler (Little, Brown)

Bob Staake's zany effervescence is fantastic, and we can't get enough of his brilliant cartoonish creations. In "Look! A Book!" children will find so much to see and do that it's difficult to know what to concentrate on first.

Using page cut-outs and rhymes to guide you to each double spread full of fun, there's a ton to discover amongst each busy set of crazy characters, vroomtastic vehicles and more than a few surprises.

There's a rather neat idea once you think you've finished too. The book urges you to go back and find all the things you might have missed. A list of common objects is hidden in each spread - and you can fold the list 'up and over' for reference. Can you find all the pizza slices and bowling pins, for instance?

A fabulous smorgasbord of observation and fun. We definitely want to hunt down the second in the series (Look! Another book!) and can't wait to see more of Bob's brilliant work.

Charlotte's best bit: Taking ages to find a cat dressed as a clown, or the tiniest robot in the world.

Daddy's Favourite bit: Full of fun, love Bob's Zany retro-futurist style. What a great little book to while away a rainy saturday afternoon!