We rather like being asked whether we'd like to join book blog tours. The problem is, we haven't really got a flipping clue what you do!

Today's editorial is a bit of a musing session on the humble (and not so humble) book blog tour.

Previously on the blog we've seen some brilliant guest posts from people we're actually deeply in awe of who really go the extra mile to produce wonderful and informative articles. We've also joined in with various publisher-organised tours and it's been great to visit other blogs on the tour to see what they've come up with.

We don't really have much of an idea how blog tours are perceived by our readers though. Do people tune in for artistic wisdom? That's certainly what we get out of it - but is there also a perception that you're being 'hired' to promote something that you would not otherwise endorse?

Again we're back to the age-old question of blogger ethics. Being included on a blog tour comes with the assumption that the organisers will promote your 'slot' on the tour, and thus drive a little traffic to your blog.

Picking through our stats for the last month (which were a record high at 22,984 unique hits - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!) I noted that blog tour posts were indeed the most popular posts for the given week, but not overall the most popular for that month.

Puzzlingly, the stats for 'all time' see blog tour posts languishing way way behind the types of articles we write and publish here. Top hitters are reviews, naturally. Second are articles, normally seasonal articles (for example, a post from 2012 about buying books instead of easter eggs is the second most popular post on the blog of all time). Third are editorials (aha, so SOMEONE reads them!) and last are blog tour related items.

We try not to turn down any opportunities to join book blog tours, mostly because we're rather tickled to be asked but also because we respect the PRs we work with and know how hard they have to work to put together a tour. Of course we're also in it to 'pay back' some of the wonderful artists and authors, offering them a bit of our blog space to strut their funky stuff on.

I am genuinely intrigued to hear how others feel about blog tours. Do you love 'em or hate 'em? Do you join in on your own book blog or do you think they're a bit of a waste of time? The comments are open, drop one in the box below!

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.