At any given moment during the day when there's a moment or two of free time, Charlotte and I are avid doodlers. The house is rapidly filling up with sketch books full of scribbles and doodles, and we've seen some brilliant activity books over the years that let you collect together your random artistic musings in new and neat ways.

Susan McBride's "Doodle Notebooks" are perfect for a bit of surreptitious scribbling. At first glance they look very like proper notebooks, which means they're perfect for me to sneak into meetings with and do some drawing while folk yammer on about yawn-some computery stuff.

The "I'm So Bored" doodle notebook and the equally fabulous "Don't Get Caught" doodle notebook give you stacks of inspiration and ideas to take your doodling to the next stage. With tons of imaginative scribbles to get you started, and quite a cheeky and subversive sense of humour throughout, you'll soon
be finding lots of excuses to whip out your doodle notebook and unleash your creativity.

We thoroughly tested both, and possibly the only minus points to mention are that these could seriously rock if they were spiral-bound (stretching them out for scribbling was a mite tough). They could probably also do with a bit more space for your scribblings, as some pages are a bit of a tight squeeze if you're the sort of person who likes loads of blank canvas to work on.

"I'm So Bored - The Doodle Notebook" and "Don't Get Caught - The Doodle Notebook", both written and illustrated by Susan McBride are out again on 7th October 2015 from Lark.

We're really struggling under the weight of some seriously brilliant books this week and the first to knock our eyes out was kindly sent to use by the superb Mat at PGUK / Quirk Books. We've been rooting for this one for a while so it was great to finally be able to take a look at it.

Being slightly 'arty' (read: absolutely hopeless) and having a daughter whose artistic ability is far outstripping my own, this book is an absolute must.

So why 'Fill in the Blank'? What's so special about another sketchbook? Well this one sets up various pages, designs and scenarios to give you a spark of inspiration for your drawing. Sometimes you'll get to design a billboard for an ad campaign, other times you'll be doing some fantastic tattoos on someone's back or drawing the most wild and whacky pair of shoes you can possibly imagine.

For Charlotte, the only real sticking point was understanding the context of some of the designs but it was actually really great for her, and even when she made up her own versions of what the 'brief' was actually after, she was totally and completely absorbed in this book for hours (to the point where the only way my wife could get her to eat dinner or do something else was to take her pencils away!)

A really brilliant and novel book / sketchpad. Perhaps aimed at older children but even for an inquisitive and artsy 4 year old, it's an excellent and original idea.

Charlotte's best bit: Drawing some fantastic caged birds, and some really wild nail polish designs

Daddy's favourite bit: Trying to remember how to draw high heeled boots for some of the 'feet' designs in this. I barely got a look in though, Charlotte wouldn't let me!

(Fill in the Blank kindly supplied by PGUK / Quirk Books for review)