Each era is depicted in the fold-out format of this book with scenes, buildings, costumes and people you'd expect to find in those historical periods. A stack of facts and figures are also shoehorned in, making this an incredibly detailed snapshot of a city's history, landmarks and daily life.






Charlotte's best bit: Victorian London at the height of the Industrial Revolution!

Daddy's Favourite bit: A superb pocket format fold out book that's crammed with fascinating information.






(Kindly sent to us for review by Frances Lincoln Children's Books)

As well as producing some of the most fantastic fiction for young children, Templar also produce a huge range of non-fiction titles designed to stimulate curious young minds. What better introduction to their "Fact Finders" range than investigating one of our favourite subjects! Big stompy warty leathery farting scoffing pooping roaring DINOSAURS!

Oh yes, we love dinosaurs and we can't resist any book that can offer new ways to present a metric TON of fascinating facts and figures about these marvellous creatures that once stalked the earth.

This informative and beautifully presented book from Ruth Martin and Nick Maland has brilliant lift-the-flap bits (As regular blog readers will know, Charlotte is hopelessly addicted to lift-the-flap books and absolutely LOVED all the bits in this where she could investigate dinosaurs (quite literally) under the skin and beyond.

The book also features brilliant pop-up sections (including our fave bit, a huge spiralling timeline of all the main dinosaur "eras" from cretaceous through pleistocene and jurassic! Awesome!)

An utterly brilliant and thoroughly researched book, bursting at the seams with tons and tons of dino facts. We can't wait to investigate more in the "Fact Finders" range.

Charlotte's best bit: Finding out that the Argentinosaurus "poohed" about 50 litres of poo a day. That's equivalent to a LOT of mint choc chip ice cream!

Daddy's Favourite bit: The fact finders range is hugely impressive. Immersive, fact-filled and beautifully presented non fiction books for eager and curious little minds!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Templar Publishing)

This is an interesting little book. At first glimpse it reads and feels a bit like a simple tale of some children being menaced by an alligator. But peel back those layers, looking for the subtle hues underneath its reptilian belly and there's more to "Snip Snap Alligator" than meets the eye.

Three children are at home when suddenly an escaped Alligator creeps slowly into the house, scaling the stairs, worming his way around corridors in search of easy meat. With each turn of the page the book seems to become more menacing, the alligator grows in the minds of the children and in the way he fills each page spread - until the children stand up to him and frighten him so much that he scampers off.

We read this through a few times before it began to sink in that it'd make a very powerful anti-bullying story. Make no bones about it, the alligator has no redeeming features, he's menacing and snaps his jaws - but when the children stand up to him he's as cowardly as they come. Describing something so terrifying but also describing how to deal with something that scary, the book really does seem to work on several levels but for children who have had issues with bullying, it speaks to them in a language they'll absolutely understand.

One last thing - the Amazon write-up on this book describes it as being like "We're going on a bear hunt" - Er, how? That completely passed me by!

Charlotte's best bit: The children standing firm and winning out in the end

Daddy's Favourite bit: Subtle, dark, menacing but also very cleverly uplifting at the end.