We love, love, LOVE Natural History books - particularly books that take a closer look at our planet, its wonders, its beauty, and just how fragile it is when it comes to natural and unnatural earth-shaking events.

"Paper World: Planet Earth" by Ruth Symons and Bomboland (that fantastic French illustrative collective) offer views of our amazing home planet from the inside out.

With innovative and artistic use of cut-outs and 'lift the flap' elements, this is a geography lesson like no other, as we take a deep dive beneath the oceans, or dig beneath the planet's surface to find out what bubbles at its core.

There are 30 flaps to lift, and lots of 'peep through' sections in each page spread to keep young minds completely engaged in the subject matter.

It's absolutely perfect for little ones who might want to learn a little more about earth, and how it came to be.


Let's take a look inside!

Falling in love with Volcanoes!

Bubbling lava and blasts of gas (sounds like an average day at ReadItDaddy Towers!)

Tites hang down, mites stick up!

Deep dark caves full of Stalactites and Stalagmites...

No, not for serving dinner on!

Earthquakes and tectonic plates!

Sum this book up in a sentence: Amazing stuff, beautifully described and illustrated, full of tons of ways to pique the curiosity of little ones everywhere!

"Paper World: Planet Earth" by Ruth Symons and Bomboland is out today, published by Templar Publishing (kindly supplied for review). 

The "Welcome to the Museum" series of utterly amazing non-fiction books, curated by Katie Scott with Fiona Munro and Ruth Symons now adopts a smaller format, but continues to blaze a trail for non-fiction titles to follow.

"The Story of Life" extends the previous fold-out edition of this title line into a fantastic small format hardback book that may be diminutive in size, but certainly packs a heck of a lot of information in between its gloriously decorated covers.

Once again, we're treated to an amazing and well researched slice of natural history, stemming as far back as the very first emergence of life on our planet, right through to the more complex organisms and animals that we recognise as each era in earth's history ushered in amazing examples of evolutionary diversity.

Having previously been wowed by other "Welcome to the Museum" titles such as Botanicum and Animalium, we really couldn't wait to see how this new smaller format would work.

In fact, as much as we love huge huge books that you need to sprawl out on the floor with, there's definitely something neater about this approach. Books that can easily be tucked into a school bag to take into school and use in lessons are definitely a win for Charlotte, and as we said at the top of the review, there's no paring down of content - which is of course the most important part of any decent Non-Fiction title.

The Triassic Period - Amazing and bizarre creatures emerged, the predecessors of many animals we know today.

Personally, I just can't get enough of Katie Scott's amazing illustrations, picked out in colour throughout but with that same incredibly detailed 'etched' look about them, instantly making these titles feel like those classic natural history books you might see tucked away in museums.

Meet your great great great great great great great (go on and on for a couple of years) grandparents!

There are now so many fantastic quality non-fiction titles around that we're really pleased to see Big Picture Press continuing to publish books that really show how it should be done. Beautifully presented, gorgeously illustrated, thoroughly researched and well written, and able to span a huge wide age range, these are definitely keepers whether you choose to buy them for school or for home.

"The Story of Life" by Fiona Munro, Ruth Symons and Katie Scott is out now, published by Big Picture Press (kindly supplied for review). 

You're really spoilt for choice these days when it comes to fabulous alphabet books.