As our #Booky100Keepers list nearly draws to a close, I had to cast eyes back over the entire list to make sure I hadn't already featured this one. Any children's book list of recommendations will have certain books that folk will firmly get behind, and "We're going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury seems to have escaped the usual "We love it / we hate it now / we love it again / no we definitely hate it now and it's not cool any more" thing that book folk go through from time to time with beloved children's titles.

But let's face it, this book bounces along, it has an entertaining story, it has an imaginative twist or two in it, and it's just so filled with alliterative read-aloud fun that it's nigh-on impossible to resist.

We bought this way back in 2012 when C was still knee high to a grasshopper and it swiftly ended up being a bedtime favourite. Back then we probably used to read at least 3-4 picture books a night to her, and this was always somewhere in the mix.

A family jaunt out into the great outdoors is filled with swishy grass to wrestle your way through, squishy mud to wade through, trip-tastic forests to navigate and then at the end, a cave...but what's inside? Or more likely who...

Michael Rosen is usually quite quick to point out that this isn't his work entirely, and the rhyme existed long before the book did. He's also very quick to point out that a large part of the success of this book is down to Helen Oxenbury's utterly perfect illustrations, filled with energy and youthful vibrance and it's these that are always the biggest draw for me, marvelling at how her sparse lines and glorious watercolours depict a living breathing landscape for her awesome family of characters to inhabit.

This was one of the books that we used to read whenever we did read-aloud events (sadly that never turned into a regular gig, which is a shame as they were always so much fun to do but lacking any silly props or daft hats I guess no one wanted to book a baldy 50-something to read aloud to their kids). What always struck me is that kids who had never heard of the book before (and yes, there were a surprising number) always got quite scared at the bit at the end. The book goes silent, wordless as the chase between the bear and the family kicks off - with the bear chasing them right to the front door of their house. I found that quite interesting, that the dark twist elicited that response, but the 'damping down' at the end as the lonely bear trudged back off to his cave always brought those kids around and turned the bear from a menacing foe into something of a sympathetic character really.

Like / hate it (and I'll be brutally honest here, the animated TV version was pretty terrible and left us utterly cold due to the liberties it took with the original story) it is without doubt one of those revered and hallowed books that you really ought to have on your kids' bookshelves. A real classic.

Original review links and articles: 

Come to Discover for a brilliant Bear Hunt spectacular from October 2015

Don't miss out on the biggest "Bear Hunt" reading in history!

Three new fantastic books for lovers of nature and the great outdoors. Perfect for Spring and Summer - out now from Walker Books

ReadItDaddy Reads aloud - Mostly Books and Usborne's 40th Anniversary, the perfect time for storytelling fun!

We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury (Walker Books)

I have to bow to my wife and daughter's expertise on the subject of Chocolate Cake...

Without a doubt, Christmas animations based on well-loved children's books are fantastic for generating new interest in children's books - but they're also utterly brilliant for spawning fab activity books based around the original book's story too.

"We're Going on a Bear Hunt" was given the animation treatment last year and now Walker Books have produced two stunning accompaniments for fans of the original Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury story, and of course the fab little animated version too.

First there's "We're Going on a Bear Hunt: My Adventure Field Guide" which is a brilliant interactive title encouraging kids to go exploring (though hopefully not to find any bears) and spy some interesting animals and plants in their own backyard and beyond.

Young naturalists will discover a wealth of facts about plants and animals, bugs and birds, clouds, the night sky, the weather, and so much more. City and country kids alike will find much to discover, from urban streets to the remotest forest.

The book features facts galore, but also recipes, science projects, and tips for how kids can help protect the environment. Whether you're Swishy-swashing your way through the long grass, or squelch-squelching through the mud, there's something here for everyone.

"My Adventure Field Guide" is out now, published by Walker Books. 

There's also "My Explorers Journal"...

Once again this is a wonderfully interactive journal for young explorer's to record, create and experience the natural world.  From the award-winning team behind Tiny: The Invisible World of Microbes comes Lots, a beautifully illustrated introduction to the concept of biodiversity for younger readers. 

The awesome Little Rebels Children's Book Awards are back for a 4th year! (Image © Ros Asquith)

It's time for our favourite book award of the year, the truly spectacular and brilliant Little Rebels Children's Book Awards for Radical Children's Fiction.

Two authors have scored a hat-trick on this year’s shortlist.

A delicious set of poetic odes to childhood, brilliantly written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Quentin Blake? Of course we're excited!!

There's always room in your bookcase for poetry anthologies, but why should tinies miss out? Here's a book written and illustrated especially for bouncy little ones who love a rib-tickling rhyme or two!

Image Credit (C) Helen Oxenbury

Michael Rosen’s Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake and Bad Things at Discover

Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury's classic children's book "We're going on a Bear Hunt" is coming to our favourite book and story venue, Discover Story from the 16th October 2015 to Spring 2016

Discover Children’s Story Centre in Stratford, East London is launching an exciting new interactive family exhibition, ‘Michael Rosen’s Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake and Bad Things.’ Discover’s exhibition will explore the fantastic stories and poems of former Children’s Laureate and bestselling writer Michael Rosen. Children and families can walk into immersive environments inspired by We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake, The Book of Bad Things and Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed.

Children can step inside a huge chocolate cake (YESSSSSS!!! We are SO there!), discover a secret larder, swishy swashy their way through a Bear Hunt and explore Bad Things in the Dread Shed. The exhibition will feature hidden rooms where clues can be found that reveal the inspiration behind Michael’s writing including his Grandparent’ sitting room and his classroom. Younger children will be able to participate in a Bear Hunt trail whilst older children can go on a fun fact finding mission and create poems of their own to takeaway.

Discover’s Joint Chief Executive, Sally Goldsworthy said, ‘We are very excited to announce this latest exhibition made in collaboration with Michael Rosen. Michael has so much energy and passion for education, creativity and writing that he is incredibly inspiring to work with.’

Award winning author Michael Rosen said ‘This exhibition is one of the most exciting things to have happened in my writing career. I am someone who has found a way of writing that is often about digging up stuff to do with my past and here is Discover making that into a giant room that families and schools will be able to explore. Just as exciting for me, as someone who works with children and students at Goldsmiths, University of London, is the idea that this exhibition will act as a springboard for children, teachers and parents to talk together about things that they remember or think up, and this, I hope, will turn into writing and performing new poems and stories. I am so looking forward to it.’

Discover’s new interactive exhibition for families Michael Rosen’s Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake and Bad Things opens on 16th October 2015 and will launch the centre’s autumn programme full of inspiration from Michael Rosen’s stories and poems.

Discover Children’s Story Centre’s exhibitions have been nominated for the 2012 European Museum Academy International Children’s Museum Award. Michael Rosen’s Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake and Bad Things follows hot on the heels of blockbuster exhibitions Once There Was...The Wonderful World of Oliver Jeffers, Secret Agents, Journey to Space and sold out collaboration with Punchdrunk Enrichment, The House Where Winter Lives.

Michael Rosen’s Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake and Bad Things has been created, produced and designed by Discover Children’s Story Centre and will be touring the country from summer 2016. Mark October in your diary, it's going to be a smasher!

We always love following some of the rather fiery conversations on Twitter that rage around the subject of children's books. In particular of late, the fact that children's illustrators are often overlooked, undervalued and their hard work scarcely warrants a mention in some reviews. As Sarah McIntyre quite rightly points out on her excellent blog and #PicturesmeanBusiness campaign, professional publications often play down or omit to mention entirely the illustrator in a writer / illustrator team who have worked on a book (in extreme cases, a well known children's classic such as "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" where Michael Rosen receives endless praise for the story in some articles, with ne'er a mention of Helen Oxenbury's utterly vital illustrations in the same article. Without Helen's illustrations, the book would never have become the classic it so rightly is IMHO).

(As an aside, Helen's art is utterly mesmerising. Her line work just completely blows me away, tiny tiny gestures and strokes to convey a whole gamut of facial expressions, movements and tone. As I said, mesmerising!)

It's not the fault of author nor illustrator, but does seem to be some quite bizarre set-in rot that seems to have been seeping slowly through the children's publishing industry for a number of years.

As our staple blogging subjects are predominantly picture books, we often find that the books that consistently hit the book of the week slot are not always visually stunning and perfect, nor are they works of wordy wonder. They achieve a perfect balance of each, with innovation both in story and illustration content.

To put this to the test, try reading a selection of picture books to your little ones - purposely obscuring the pictures, or not showing them to your children as you read. Did that work out for you? I can only think of one book in our recent reviewing history that works on that level - and it's "The Book with No Pictures" by B.J. Novak - a book that works as well as a piece of performance art purely through the act of making adults who read aloud to their children look a bit daft. Genius, sheer genius.

Once again though, try another exercise. Arm yourself with a pad of post-it notes and stick them over the text in a few picture books. Just show the pictures, don't read the story. How did that work out for you? In very few cases (unless purposely designed as such), picture books don't really work that well without their accompanying words either. The balance needs to be exactly that. A balance, and some extremely talented folk are equally adept at writing and illustration, pulling off the amazing trick of balancing both with aplomb in stories that completely blow us away.

One final thought on Sarah's excellent and extremely important observations about children's illustrators. We firmly believe that an appreciation of art, and definitely an appreciation of children's books (illustrations AND writing) does not require formal training in either. Absolutely not. Reviewers can only offer an opinion but that opinion is not lessened by a sharp lack of knowledge of the art techniques of Vermeer, or the fine-tuned lingual acrobatics of Shakespeare. Does your 3-6 year old have that training? (OK there probably are people out there who will answer 'yes but in general, they don't - so does this mean they can't appreciate children's picture books nor offer an opinion on them, even if their opinion is "I don't like this book, it's poo!"

We do not claim to be expert critics by any means and in fact we rather like a healthy debate around a book if someone disagrees with us on it.

We do not get paid to do this, nor would we ever try to tread on the toes of professional bodies whose job it is to ensure the growth of the publishing industry and for that matter those who carry the responsibility of promoting the services of some of the industry's leading illustrative and literate folk. But we are the consumers of the 'product', children are who these books were made for, so don't just scrub those opinions into the food waste bin.

"We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury (Walker Books) is one of THE books that is absolutely essential for your child's book collection.
We nominated it as one of our "Book of the Week" selections back in 2012, but it's been around for a lot longer (it first saw the light of day 25 years ago, wow!)

To celebrate the book's anniversary and timeless appeal, a very special record attempt was made a few weeks ago in aid of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Alas we missed the live stream of a record-breaking mass reading of "We're going on a Bear Hunt" but didn't want you to miss out - so please do check out the video below, it's hugely entertaining. 1438 intrepid bear hunters joined Nikki Gamble and Michael Rosen and succeeded in smashing the record! Awesome work, everyone!


"We're Going on a Bear Hunt" has gone on to sell millions of copies worldwide, and has been turned into an animated feature and a stage show.

Find out more about the record breaking event, and also more about this utterly wonderful book on the Walker Books Website

It's crazy, it's whacky, it's also one of those rare things - a book that features a Dad who's not a complete dunce, glutton or wet-end! Hooray! In "Send for a Superhero" a dad is reading his children's favourite bed time story. It's a fast-paced exciting comic story about giant invading monsters who will not stop until they've polluted the earth or vacuumed up all the riches (no knowing nods to Rosen's political leanings there, nosiree!!)

We loved the way the book dances between the warm fuzzy glow of dad reading to Emily and Elmer, and the story of young Brad 40 - a schoolboy superhero who reacts quickly once Filth and Vacuum (the story's horrid monster baddies) roll into action. Summoning superheroes from all over the world, can the monsters be brought to justice?

The book deftly celebrates things we hold dear. Reading to your children before tucking them up for the night, and plenty of nods to exciting action-based comic goodness, we'll be reading and re-reading this one.

Charlotte's best bit: Oh no, it's Incredibly Boring Man! ZZZZZZZZZ

Daddy's Favourite bit: Fab dad reading to his kids, fab comic book nods, full of excitement and wonderful art. Don't miss this one!

Books are often so beautifully presented and stunning to look at that they become art forms in their own right, even before you lift the cover and delve inside.

The moment we saw Michael Rosen's treatment of Aesop's Fables, clad in its utterly stunning covers (by Talleen Hacikyan), we knew this would be a book we'd be able to enjoy for years to come.

When I was a lad, I had an Aesop's Fables collection, a paperback that was illustrated in that bizarre 70s art style that looked like a cross between Picasso and Dali. In this Aesop collection, the dark and stunning illustrations are the perfect counterpoint to the respun versions of the well-loved fables.

Best of all, this is a nice thick tome but broken down into a page-a-story format, so you can chip away at the stories each night before bedtime, even if time's at a premium - or do what we did and enjoy them all, one after the other, in one glorious gulp!

Fables such as The Lion, The Spider and the Mosquito and The Dog and the Wolf are here, each with a valuable life lesson underpinning the (mostly animal) based stories.

We've previously said we find a lot of Rosen's work fabulous for adults but not always a great hit with children. This is perfect though, as each story is sensitively and expertly given a new lease of life in Rosen's trademark perfect prose style. There's a rather nice little biog at the back too if children want to discover more about Aesop themselves.

For us though, the star of the show is those illustrations. They practically leap off the page to run around all over your desk. Many books can be considered 'keepers' - books you can imagine passing down from generation to generation and this is definitely such a book. It's released on 13th June so you won't have long to wait till you can slide between those deliciously illustrated covers and rediscover the genius of Aesop yourself.

Charlotte's best bit: The story of the Fox, the Wolf and the Lion (which is actually a bit gruesome, eek!)

Daddy's favourite bit: The story of the Trees and the Woodcutters.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Tradewind Books)

I'll be the first to admit that we really didn't like "I'm Number One" at first, and truly believed we were stricken with some sort of virus that made us miss the point of ever single Michael Rosen book except "We're going on a Bear Hunt".

But on re-reading, and discussing, "I'm Number One" wraps its lesson so tightly up with its little set of toy characters that it's quite hard to see past the thoroughly unlikeable clockwork soldier and his behaviour, through to the message the book is conveying.

The Toy Soldier loudly proclaims that he is Number One, and once his friends wind up his clockwork mechanism, the soldier proceeds to criticise, bully and berate them.

Why? Because as number one, the top of the tree, he believes he's better than anyone else. But of course there's one thing he just can't quite do on his own so when he starts to run down, the soldier realises that being Number One is all well and good, but being part of the gang is better!

It's a neat and subtly delivered message and I tried to draw out of Charlotte how she would deal with someone who behaves like this. Interesting discussions about rude and overbearing behaviour from a five year old are wholly enlightening and from an adult perspective, it's quite interesting to hear how children deal with the delicate balance of power in the classroom or at play and how different they handle things compared to us 'grown ups'.

Rosen's poetry is super, his storytelling is sometimes a little bit too self-assuredly 'clever' for its own good (yes I know, that's tantamount to children's-book-treason but I still don't rate Happy Harry's Cafe, nyaaah!), but stick with this book and you'll appreciate its theme and subtle delivery of said theme too.

Charlotte's best bit: When the soldier realises that the gang should really have all their lovely things back.

Daddy's favourite bit: The amusing parallels between the interactions of this tiny gang of toys and the social and political machinations at the workplace!

ReaditDaddy reading to a great little bunch of Bookworms!

Well, as promised I wanted to get out there and do this. Reading aloud to children always looks like a massive amount of fun (though really nerve-wracking) and so @thestrollingmum and I thought it would be ace to do something 'Booky' at Charlotte's birthday bash.

Though the kids were tired and stuffed to the gills with lovely party food, I managed to corral a few to listen to me reading 'We're going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury.

It's a great book to read in this setting for lots of reasons. One - most kids know it already either from school or home so it's a challenge to read it in a new and exciting way (we did lots of interaction and actions to go along with the tale). Two - It's an exciting book, some kids actually found it a little scary too (mostly because of the 'bear bit').

Though we were huddled in a tiny corner of the venue it was a great fun way to start out and I'd really love to do this again (perhaps when Charlotte isn't continually blowing a party razzer in my ear - cheeky monkey!)

We really ran out of time, which was a shame as we'd got two other books to read. What's interesting here is that only the girls sat down for story time, the boys were too busy running around, playing ninjas and kicking balloons around. Hmm - note to self, try and mix things up a bit with more books with 'boy appeal' next time!

Janet and John Books. Yep I am that old, these and the Peter and Jane books were in use at my school when I was Charlotte's age! As Michael Gove once again wades into the fray surrounding early literacy and 'learning to read', with Michael Rosen and Julia Donaldson also weighing in with (better informed) opinions, it seems that 2012's favourite literary topic - encouraging and developing a child's reading skills from an early age - isn't going away in 2013.  Rightly so, it's amongst the most important - if not THE most important skill a child begins to learn when they start school, and though most schools adopt the national standards and phonics, and these are fantastically effective tools to aid a child's reading development, I too agree that they should not be the only thing used to encourage a child to read.  Our experience with Charlotte and also shared experiences we hear from other parents suggest that children often feel completely overwhelmed by the options on offer, to the point where different phonics standards, different methods of teaching non-phonic (tricky) words and of course the gigantic differences in reading 'ages' for children all stack up and do more harm than good.  The problem seems to be that the government (and to a certain extent most parents) want a 'magic bullet' - a quick-fire method of turning a child who can't read into one that is fully literate, can read confidently on their own and can start to further develop their literacy skills through a standard set of books neatly pigeonholed into a recommended reading / book list in the shortest time possible.  Our recent experience from Charlotte starting school has taught us that children have such a gigantic amount of information to soak up on a daily basis that when they do have 5 minutes to spare, the very last thing they want to do is sit down with a great story book and read because they can't differentiate between reading for pleasure and reading as a class exercise ('work'). This is something that Michael Rosen has expressed concerns about and it's very easy to see why. I partially agree with his view that parrot-fashion phonics learning can turn kids off wanting to actually read stories for the sheer joy of it, and it could merely be because repetition, recognition and 'breaking down' of words are too disjointed  and completely alien to the 'flow' of the way we read stories.  Julia Donaldson's recent views on how children can gain more benefit from 'acting out' stories while learning to read are absolutely spot on. There's a level of engagement required there, and a class full of children assuming a role and being encouraged to read it are instantly transformed into a brilliant 'team' who, with the right help and cues, can better memorise the words in a story as well as the overall story itself.  We have found the Oxford Learning Tree books to be quite engaging and useful, but again quite often we actually see better results in more traditional 'picture' story books when Charlotte is encouraged to read words aloud in the context of those stories. For obvious reasons, most phonics and learning books are kept short, often fairly lightweight in plot and character development, and fit structured patterns of recognition, staged learning and repetition / decoding that perhaps help a teacher track a child's understanding and ability to deal with that stage or level of reading learning but probably don't offer much beyond this. It's like trying to ascertain whether someone's a great driver by getting them to drive 10ft on a variety of surfaces before rubber-stamping them as a qualified driver, and sending them out on a long road trip across the country.  We obviously don't have a magic bullet any more than anyone else, but we've found that there is little or perhaps even no worth in just relying on the structured and phonics methods of encouraging Charlotte to read. If you do not supplement this type of reading with more traditional methods of reading stories (aloud, together and even letting a child have a go on their own) then they're going to miss probably the most important reason to learn to read in the first place - because it's a massive amount of fun and can open the doors of your imagination in ways nothing else can.

Michael Rosen is something of a legend in Children's books, so it's a bit odd to feel a bit 'meh' about his latest book. Don't get me wrong, it's got a smooth jazzy vibe running through it, with tons of energy and fun but it also felt a bit like watching an improv play. So what's going on at Harry's Cafe?

Harry is a big smiley bear, a soup-meister of some repute and his animal customers just can't wait to rush to his cafe to sample his delicious legendary soup.

Harry cooks up a batch and as usual he is heaped with praise. But one customer is not happy. "The soup is no good" says a rather disgruntled Matt the Cat.

What on earth could be wrong with the soup?

It's a higgledy piggledy story backed up by Richard Holland's brilliant cafe poster style artwork, and children will absolutely love joining in with the crazy song and the pace of the book. It left me feeling a bit like I'd heard a bum note in a Dizzy Gillespie number but Charlotte utterly loved Harry and his effervescent style.

Charlotte's best bit: Jo the Crow, she's not slow, she's on the go!

Daddy's favourite bit: Love Richard Holland's art style, faaaab cafe, man!