Oh no, someone's got a monk on! It's time for the return of Sarah McIntyre's super-surly and fabulous creation to make a second appearance in "Don't Call Me Grumpycorn" which is out today, hooray!

Unicorn, Narwhal, Mermaid and Jellyfish are ready for an adventure and Unicorn comes up with a plan for the best adventure yet - venturing out into the deep darkness of outer space.

But when the four friends disagree over which planet to visit first, Unicorn most definitely turns into a very grumpy Grumpycorn and decides to go off on his own.

Will Unicorn see the error of his ways? 

Our (highly illustrated) Chapter Book of the Week this week unleashes a new book series on an unsuspecting world...

Now here's something we can really get behind - a fantastic activity book featuring a cast of completely chaotic characters, oh and of course a metric ton of snorty snuffly snuggly pugs!

We've long been supporters of the awesome BookTrust and their energetic efforts to get youngsters reading and into books from an early age.

This year’s Bath, Book, Bed campaign has been launched, which aims to help parents get little ones to sleep with reading as a vital part of the bedtime routine. Here’s this year’s bedtime booklist for little ones: http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/children/booklists/444/ and the campaign, supported by Supernanny Jo Frost and dad superstar Daddy Pig - http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/children/bath-book-bed

This month, BookTrust have the theme of nature for their online content, it being May and all! Check out Fish Boy author Chloe Daykin’s recommendations for nature-themed children’s books here: http://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-blogs/blogs/booktrust/1123 and a nature nonfiction booklist here: http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/children/booklists/445/

The BookTrust current Writer in Residence is the awesome Sarah McIntyre who has been blogging some amazing stuff! This week, why it’s fantastic to be a co-author: http://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-blogs/blogs/booktrust/1129

BookTrust are also really excited to announce that this year’s Time to Read book, sent to every Reception-aged child in England, will be Nadia Shireen’s The Bumblebear! http://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-blogs/news/1445

Awesome news all round. Keep up with the BookTrust website for more information and news.

"Zany" is one of those words that we don't get to use often enough in modern life...

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.

Ack, we just missed out on wishing Sarah a happy birthday for yesterday - so HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY Sarah!

We also missed out on Vern and Lettuce's original run in the now sadly defunct "The DFC" - a children's comic from David Fickling that collected together some of the most awesome talent in the business, including Sarah of course. Though "The DFC" went the way of the dodo, a Phoenix (or rather THE Phoenix) rose from the ashes and the rest, as they say, is history.

Vern and Lettuce originally appeared as a strip in "The DFC" and this collection gathers together all the awesome strips in one handy and convenient tome.

Take a visit to Pickle Rye, where a fuzzy and friendly sheep and an exuberant busy little rabbit live with a whole host of other cool and crazy animal characters.

Collecting together serialised strips like this means you can conveniently 'drop in' at any point and pick up the thread of what's going on in Vern and Lettuce's world. Everything from dealing with an unruly mole gang (and their messy bikes) to working out the finer points of emulating The Great British Bake-Off.

Sarah has collected together some awesome activity sheets for Vern and Lettuce, which you can nab from her fabulous Jabberworks website.  As the collection has just been re-issued, you can now nab it with its fabulous new cover too!

Charlotte's best bit: Spotting all the 'cameos' of Sarah that work their way into the strips.

Daddy's favourite bit: Fun, cool and like all Sarah's stuff, awesomely drawn. Make a little room in your collection for Vern and Lettuce, you won't regret it.

All set for lunch? Tasty sandwich sitting dutifully next to your keyboard (un-nibbled of course!)

Then you might want to look away because the book we're about to review might just put you off your anchovy and marmite sarnie.

We love monster books. Monsters of all shapes and sizes. Fuzzy ones, fat ones, thin ones, monsters that are fierce, monsters that are friendly. But how about monsters that are, well, manky?

Morris is the mankiest monster we've ever met on the blog. He's a one-monster whirlwind of whiffyness. Dribbling, drooling, pus-encrusted and picking. Morris does his utmost to be the top of the toe-jam crop.

Putting together the fabulous talents of rhyming royalty Giles Andreae with our super-secret crush Sarah McIntyre is a stroke of genius. No one twizzles together brilliant (and stomach-churning) monstery rhymes like Giles, and no one draws pus-popping pimples like Sarah.

We take a trip through a day in the life of Morris as we see where he sleeps (ugh!), we see what he eats (glurk!) and we see what he does when he needs to restore his natural whiffy allure.

We have had this book on our wishlist for ages, and finally spotted it lurking in the library (it's very hard to miss that cover, let's face it!)

Charlotte was instantly drawn to finding out more about Morris, perhaps because her least favourite time of the day is bath time and secretly if we let her get away with it, she'd out-mank Morris in a matter of moments.

If you have a cast-iron constitution, and perhaps a fragrant bouquet to sniff in between pages, then Morris the Mankiest Monster will charm the very (smelly) socks off you. Just be sure not to strain any rotting strawberries through them first. Bleee!

Charlotte's best bit: Morris's bath, which coincidentally is exactly the same colour as Charlotte's once we've chiselled the dirt off her (how DOES a 5 year old girl turn bath water green? HOW?)

Daddy's favourite bit: It's gross, it's grimace-inducing but it's groovy, baby!

How is it even possible that we've somehow managed to miss reviewing anything by two of our favourite folk on Twitter? Gillian Rogerson (get well soon, hope the flu is better!) and Sarah McIntyre are both fantastic and brilliant so it's with the greatest pleasure that we found "You Can't Scare a Princess" in our local library stacks.

Combining two of Charlotte's most favourite things in the whole world (Princesses and Pirates) and one or two of mine (Pot Noodles and Sushi Soy Sauce), "You Can't Scare a Princess" finds out what happens when the diminutive and delightful Princess Spaghetti (such fabulous hair!) and her roller-skating dad King Cupcake set out on their skates one day - only to be kidnapped by a bunch of treasure-grabbing pirates.

The captain is a mean moustachioed cove who will stop at nothing to discovere where the palace treasure is hidden. Luckily the plucky Princess Spaghetti has her wits about her and is absolutely not scared of a haphazard bunch of pirates.

A bouncy and brilliant story full of fun, coupled with Sarah's utterly sublime artwork is a winning combination. The sequel to "You Can't Eat a Princess", it's a fantastic book and we'll be looking out for more from Gillian and Sarah from now on!

Charlotte's best bit: Having hair exactly like Princess Spaghetti's most of the time.

Daddy's favourite bit: Crazy and brilliant drawings throughout (including a McIntyre Cameo in the shape of one of the pirates - that Sarah used for her Twitter avatar for most of last year)