Encouraging a love for books in the very young is always made easier when you find a really cool and engaging board book you can share with them.

"Hug this book!" wears its heart on its sleeve, an unashamed celebration of all the ways books can be loved and shared with the tiniest of tinies.

Of course you can read a book but did you know you can smell a book? Share a book? Give a book as a gift? And of course hug it?

In Barney and Fred's (surely a name match made in heaven) lovely whimsical story you'll meet a cast of kids who truly love books and really love sharing them with all their friends too!

Books can be enjoyed just about everywhere!

With simple yet stylish illustrations using a reduced palette, this board book keeps the word count down too - so little ones of every age, right up to solo readers, can really get into the swing of the story quite quickly.

This is our favourite spread. A booky warm snuggly cuddle! Perfect for this time of year!

"Hug this book" by Barney Saltzberg and Fred Benaglia is out now, published by Phaidon (Kindly supplied for review)

It's time for our first Book of the Week for 2019, a truly amazing book that gathers together some of the most iconic designs ever created for children.

"Design for Children: Play, Ride, Learn, Eat, Create, Sit, Sleep" by Kimberlie Birks and Lora Appleton really is the sort of book you can completely lose yourself in.

It seems creators are usually at their most playful and whimsical when designing things for children to enjoy, whether they're simple designs that just make sense or functional designs that do something we've taken for granted in such a simple yet innovative way.

As a complete design nerd, I have loved leafing through this luxurious book filled with brilliant toys, amazing beds and chairs, clever methods to engage kids with learning and ways to encourage picky eaters to enjoy mealtimes.

We seemed to have our daughter at a time when clever designs were everywhere, and yet looking through this book it's very clear that talented folk have been creating amazing things for kids for a very long time.

Great for bathtime or bedtime, cloud-shaped designs for your little dreamers

It works as the sort of hefty coffee table book your visitors won't be able to resist browsing through. It also works as a way of highlighting just how many things you've either had yourself as a kid, or have bought for your own kids actually came about.

Bet you wish you were pint-sized again, just so you could try these out!

It's reminiscent of a certain Scandi store's catalogues, but gathers together stunning photography with some simple facts about each object, and a little bit about the creators of these amazing things too.

So cute!

Thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable this.

C's favourite object: The cool wooden cars with glorious aerodynamic shapes

Daddy's favourite object: Everything by Brio. I still adore those little wooden train sets and would probably fill the house with them if I was allowed to.

"Design for Children" by Kimberlie Birks and Lora Appleton is out now, published by Phaidon (kindly supplied for review). 

Hooray! Hooray! Every day is a cookie day! Our second Picture Book of the Week means it's time to get baking!

We've got three tempting treats for tiny tiddlers on the blog today, courtesy of Phaidon who kindly sent three awesome little books to us for review.

The first is "Rhyme Flies" by Antonia Pesenti, a fun book that allows little ones to play around with language and come up with some cracking rhymes all of their own.

This deceptively simple idea for a book offers up one surprising rhyme per spread revealed behind a dramatic gatefold flap.  When Circle rolls into one of Triangle's points and pops, chaos momentarily ensues until Octagon's "Stop!" brings everyone to their senses. 

All colours and shapes, all sizes and guises!

From sailboats to ferry boats, tankers to clippers, young readers will learn to identify and define a range of floating craft. 

This is a "Make" book like no other. 25 of the world's top designers have collaborated with curator Thomas Barnthalter for something really special...

What better way to round off a book lover's meal than with a stack of booky pancakes? Our second Book of the Week this week is the fabulous "Pancakes! An Interactive Recipe Book" by Lotta Nieminen...

It's not Taco Tuesday (alas!) but we're all over this fantastic book for our Picture Book of the Week this week. Let's cook in a book!

Here's an utterly fantastic little board  book with an innovative 'round' design that plopped into our review pile, making us both giggle and 'awww' at the same time.

We love funny books, we love clever books - and we absolutely LOVE Jean Jullien who has a knack for producing both!

Here's "Before and After"...

The latent graphic designer in me always looks for interesting designs and illustrations in children's books that really 'push' the expected model...