This one's a bit of an early reveal, as its not actually out until April - but we do love a superb and original picture book, particularly one that elicits such cackles and belly laughs as this.

"Two for Me, One for You" by Jorg Muhle is the sort of picture book perfection that starts with a very simple premise. Bear, while out walking, discovers some lovely mushrooms and brings them home to her best pal Weasel so they can enjoy a slap-up fungi feast.

But when it comes to sharing, Bear isn't too bright - but begins to justify why she should have the lion's (sorry, bears!) share of the goodies.

While Bear and Weasel argue, there's a neat twist that effectively sews up their argument for them - but you know us, we're not into spoilers, so we won't ruin that delicious moment for you.

As ever, this is the sort of brilliance that Gecko Press are thankfully so great at bringing to our shores, a book that has a simple - yet universal message that kids will (sometimes rather guiltily) identify with - particularly if you've ever put one kid in charge of the jellybean jar, telling them to 'share fairly'

Sum this book up in a sentence: A deliciously observed slice of comic genius from Jorg Muhle on the subject of sharing, friendships and a tiny bit of social justice mixed in for good measure in a fab little picture book.

"Two for Me, One for You" by Jorg Muhle is out on April 1st 2020, published by Gecko Press (kindly supplied for review). 

This is a book that spoke to me - probably a tad more than it spoke to my daughter as she's grown up in a household where artistic endeavours are positively encouraged.

But in "The Bird Within Me" by Sara Lundberg, we find out what it must have been like for Berta Hansson - a swedish artist growing up - with her mother slowly dying and only a paternal figure, a farmer who did not understand her longing and yearning to express herself through beauty and art.

Berta longed to break away from the farm, and sought the bravery and inspiration to live her own truth, follow her own path and push back against her father's wishes to follow his farming life.

The main reason this spoke so strongly to me was for a similar reason, growing up with little or no encouragement to be a daydreamer, an imagineer, someone whose mind is too busy to undertake fairly menial and unimaginative pursuits so there's a bittersweet feeling of admiration tempered with a tiny touch of jealousy for Berta and the way her story ends (which I'm obviously not going to spoil, but she's well worth looking up - her work is incredible!)



Sum this book up in a sentence: A superbly inspirational book for anyone who feels like they have to justify having an active and expressive imagination that doesn't 'fit' with their world.

"The Bird Within Me" by Sara Lundberg is out now, published by Book Island (kindly supplied for review)

A scintillating and atmospheric tale from an amazing author and illustrator, drawing together influences and sources from the amazing verbal tradition of First Nation folk tales.

"Wild Wolf" by Fiona French may well have a distant-past setting, but the strong female characters and their situations will feel utterly relevant to girls and women today.

When Bravest Warrior is refused as a suitor by beautiful Proud Girl his heart turns to anger.

In revenge he makes Ice Man, who leads Proud Girl into great danger.

But Wild Wolf, guardian spirit, is watching.

Can he rescue Proud Girl and could pride and anger turn to forgiveness and love?

Sum this book up in a sentence: Fiona's deft storytelling and amazing artwork bring this tale to life for a modern audience, showing that self-belief, bravery and cunning can defeat even the mightiest foe.

"Wild Wolf" by Fiona French is out now, published by Otter-Barry Books (kindly supplied for review)

Sometimes a new book hits our review pile from a talented debut author, and you imagine what it must have been like to be the commissioning editor seeing that book in its raw form for the first time, and feeling that same frisson of excitement that you, the reader, now feel.

So it was with our Chapter Book of the Week this week, the utterly brilliant "The BigWoof Conspiracy" by Dashe Roberts, (hopefully) book 1 in an exciting new series that delves into the paranormal, setting out an enticing storyworld that just ticks all the right boxes for us.

We're huge fans of cult TV, strange phenomenon, mysterious creatures and conspiracy theories so you can imagine how fabulous this book was for us.

The story begins in a distinctly weird place, the town of Sticky Pines which is probably twinned with Eerie, Indiana - or any number of fictional towns where weird goings on are the norm.

Lucy Sladan is completely obsessed with UFOs and weird creatures and spends her time poring over dusty old tomes of abduction accounts, and weird old books about bizarre phenomenon (sounds a LOT like me aged 10 and also a lot like C who is really into all this stuff too).

In the midst of a thunderstorm and on the trail of a spate of strange disappearances in her home town of Sticky Pines, Lucy encounters a huge hairy creature stalking through the woods.

Terrified, she later also meets a new ally - Milo Fisher, also obsessed with all things paranormal but the holder of a deep dark secret - perhaps Milo knows more about the disappearances - and the creature - than he's letting on.

As the mystery begins to unfold, you can absolutely tell Dashe had a ball writing this, dipping into all the tropes and stories that offer the rich fertile ground on which this book is built. It's filled with action, suspense and a few moments where you pause for breath - only to realise you've been holding your breath for the last five minutes and are beginning to turn blue!

It's glorious, utterly glorious and comes with our highest recommendation. Just stop what you're doing, whether you're hunting sasquatches or trying to take photos of ghosts, and get down to your local bookshop for a copy of this. It's just so darned good!

Sum this book up in a sentence: The X-Files meets Eerie Indiana Meets John A.Keel in the body of a mighty young girl who delves into the deeply mysterious occurences in her very odd home town, making this a middle grade series destined for greatness!

"The BigWoof Conspiracy" by Dashe Roberts is out now, published by Nosy Crow (kindly supplied for review). 

Once again it looks like those fantastic "The Phoenix Presents" roll-up compilations from the glorious comic are going to dominate our "Comic / Graphic Novel of the Week" slot in 2020.

It's the turn of the mightiest chef in the universe this week as James Stayte's utterly fantastic creation Gorebrah smashes through our kitchen wall, rustles through our ingredients cupboard and cooks up a hilarious rib-tickling soupçon of scintillating sizzling comic strip action.

"Gorebrah: The Mightiest Chef in the Universe" lightly pan-fries the initial run of strips from The Phoenix Comic, deftly served up with additional content for would-be trainee Barbarian chefs in a cookbook sublime though we think it's worth pointing out that eating Zombie Lasagne might have adverse side effects and a sudden craving for brains.

James' strips are always blimmin' funny, brilliantly drawn and he has a knack for working in hilarious references that grown ups might titter at, while they sail right over their kids' heads (a certain rootytooty saxophone scene still sticks in the mind as one of the funniest refs I think I've ever seen and couldn't resist calling James out about on Twitter).

It's also one of C's favourite strips in the comic, but sadly doesn't seem to have inspired her to help me out with cooking the dinner on a busy evening!

So here it is then, another fabulous gateway into the world of The Phoenix Comic if you've yet to discover the awesomeness yourself, and a truly fantastic wrap-up of Gorebrah's mightiest early moments. Also a good excuse to dive into the weeklies as well at the moment as Gorebrah's back in those too!

Sum this book up in a sentence: Like a manic cross between Conan and Gordon Ramsay (but thankfully with a lot less swearing and nastiness), Gorebrah reigns supreme and this collection is absolutely brilliant and hilarious.

"Gorebrah! The Mightiest Chef in the Universe" by James Stayte is out now, published by David Fickling Books (kindly supplied for review). 

We've been huge fans of The Etherington Brothers since first discovering their work in the fabulous Phoenix Comic - and so far Lorenzo has put together some truly stunning tutorial collections under the "How to Think when you Draw" umbrella.

But this time it's the turn of his brilliantly funny brother Robin - the 'writing' half of the team - to pour his wisdom into a fantastic tome that will give writers a huge shot in the arm in terms of skills, and a huge boost to their confidence as they start to write up some of the exercises contained in this book.

As the boys have been running their own tutorials free over at https://theetheringtonbrothers.blogspot.com for some time now, it's great to see Robin's writing tutorials finally getting a solid roundup like this, in a gorgeously presented hardcover edition which recently launched successfully on Kickstarter.

We've been hoovering these books up whenever they're released (always worth following the guys over on twitter @theetheringtonbrothers to see what they're cooking up next!)

I'm interested in both sides of the coin, both illustration and writing - but writing is where I struggle the most, and for would-be authors it's sometimes quite daunting considering all the variables and structural elements of a piece of writing, even if you've got past the real first hurdle - getting some subject inspiration.

Robin helpfully delves into the intricaties of character and plot, but builds on these with fantastic weapons to add to your arsenal such as working in back stories, figuring out sensible naming conventions for your characters (or non-sensible ones that will still work beautifully).

At each point there are exercises to try yourself - and so far I've been working through this book with a journal, noting down and attempting each exercise in turn, and seeing a light at the end of the tunnel with my own writing efforts.

What I like best about Robin's approach is that it's less preachy, less draconian about writing 'conventions' and in most cases though Robin pays due homage to 'the roolz' he does dispense with them when they're a bit too limiting, and shows you how to do the same - and get away with it!

My favourite exercises - the ones I found the most helpful - were the character-based ones, where you'll learn how to really get under your character's skin and work out what makes them tick - and how to avoid those pitfalls like making your characters too much like you (or not enough if you're self-referencing) and how to avoid getting sued by including folk in your stories that might not want to be in there!

It's brilliant this, like a reference bible for writers at any level, regardless of the genre or subject you want to write about. Having direct access to the contents of Robin's creative brain in this way can only be a good thing (particularly if you've ever seen any of the workshops or shows he and his brother produce - they're gold dust, just like this book!)

Sum this book up in a sentence: A stupendous book filled with amazing insights, tips and tricks to give your writing a real shot in the arm, or to get you started on the right foot when it comes to dreaming up stories, characters and plots.

"How to Think When You Write" by Robin Etherington is out now, self published (self purchased - not provided for review)

Noseying into yet another Twitter conversation as the inspiration for this week's ReadItTorial, I read an exchange between two noted comic creatives who were musing on the concept of celebrating their own successes, and how caustic the reaction can be when you do so on social media.

Ah, the British. We are a nation that, on the one hand, are fiercely proud of our heritage (despite most of it coming from abroad), almost to a fault. We also seem to have an inbuilt pathological dislike of success, partly justified when people who regularly 'fail upwards' here seem to reap amazing rewards despite being utterly hopeless.

BUT we are also very quick to kick people when they're down, extracting some twisted sense of deep joy when someone fails so spectacularly that they make the news, or become a meme, or whatever the modern equivalent of 'ending up in the stocks pelted with rotten fruit' is.

When I see creatives talking about being shy about celebrating their successes, or perhaps even talking about some nice thing they've purchased for themselves off the back of their hard-earned endeavours in kidlit, comics or art, I can't help thinking we've all got it completely wrong here. Why do we feel the need to chastise folk who describe how a book advance has helped them realise their dream of going on a smashing holiday, doing up their crumbling house, hell - even purchasing a flashy new gadget to further their creative efforts? Yet here we are.

This topic dovetails neatly with another that I keep meaning to drag onto our ReadItTorial slot, the thorny subject of due reward when it comes to creative effort. Many times we've discussed the class divide in children's publishing, and that extends out into other forms of creative and non-creative writing. Let's face it, to make a career in writing you need to have at least another (quite often non-creative) career that pays your bills - possibly for a very long time - before you can lop that off and just concentrate your efforts on the creative stuff.

Long ago I completely gave up on taking my meagre art training forwards into anything either in furthering my education or trying to build a freelance or paid gig career from it. Not just because (truthfully) I'm not very good, but mostly because I know I can earn enough to support a family and own a house from working in the soul-crushing hate-filled abcess of a job known as "IT". In a world where you either work your bollocks off to make a living, or you're born with a silver spoon jammed firmly between the lips you never kiss with, you could probably count huge moneyspinning creative career professionals you know or converse with on the fingers and toes you possess, possibly with a few left over.

I really wish it wasn't that way. I would love to be paid to write, I really would. Writing is something I can do, at great speed, in great volume, but I've never seen anything I could move sideways into, writing wise, that could possibly compete with my current gig in terms of a solid monthly pay packet that's fairly comfortable to live on, if not excessive.

New authors must feel a little bit like this. Some are prolific and can turn out enough books to keep their heads above water, but for most, the creative process is time (and resource) consuming and can't just be churned through - and for most, if they can manage a book a year, they feel they're doing OK - and I doubt there are many emerging authors in kidlit who could earn an advance that's good enough to live on for a year when they're starting out.

Virtually every single piece of guidance I see for new and prospective authors and illustrators in kidlit start with the stark point one of "Never do it for the money, there is no money" and that remains true. Which, in a roundabout way, brings me back to my original point of thinking that we should be clapping creatives on the back when they make enough to afford something nice for themselves, not shouting them down for it.

Ooh now this one's definitely caught our eye, and we've been marvelling at the gorgeous atmosphere of it since it first made its way through our letterbox.

"Dandelion's Dream" by Yoko Tanaka is a wordless picture book that begins with an implied question...

"What would you do if you only had one day to live?"

Pretty huge philosophical stuff, you'll agree but Yoko has blissfully tapped into a day in the life of a dandy lion - well a Dandelion, who is determined to make the very best use of 24 hours embarking on an adventure of imagination, discovery and sheer joyfulness at the beauty of the world.

The book is amazing to look at, picked out mostly in grey hues but with gorgeous contrasting splashes of yellow and other colours to help bring the pages to life and feed them with sunshiney energy.

Dandelion's day is quite something, and the most fun with this book is hearing children interpret each page spread in their own unique way, anticipating Lion's feelings and thoughts as the story unwinds, and of course using the power of the wordless format to build their own stories within the construct of this vibrant and amazing book world.

Let the train take the strain!

There were times when this reminded us both of Chris Van Allsburg's amazing books, making great use of tone and greyscale in the illustrations that almost feel like they can leap off the page into your life.

Sum this book up in a sentence: Quite something this, one of the most original picture books we've seen in a while, and a blissful dreamscape to spend a lot longer than a single day in, as kids are absolutely bound to demand this one again and again.

"Dandelion's Dream" by Yoko Tanaka is out today, published by Walker Books (kindly supplied for review). 

Ahead of Mother's Day on the 22nd March, how about a fantastic poetry compilation with poems by Justin Coe and Illustrations by Steve Wells.

"The Magic Of Mums" is released today by Otter-Barry books, celebrating the amazing awesomeness of mums, in a diverse collection of poems perfect for reading aloud.

Meet gentle mums, action mums, hardworking mums and just plain awesome mums in this fab collection of rhyming and non-rhyming verse.

Everyone knows that mums are special, and this brill book follows nicely on from Justin's other collection "The Dictionary of Dads" (just in case you're stuck for a father's day present for later on in the year.

"The Magic of Mums" by Justin Coe and Steve Wells is out today, published by Otter-Barry Books.

Something more whacky suit your tasts? How about "There's a Crocodile in the House" by performance poet Paul Cookson with illustrations by Liz Million.

There's a crocodile in the house! How on earth would you deal with something so dangerous yet so whacky? (We loved this bounce-along rhyme that's absolutely perfect for a bit of audience participation and reading-aloud fun).

Other strange subjects find their way into Paul's collection in a truly rib-tickling selection box filled with variety and fun.

Kids love poetry and these two books are a great addition to any home or class library.

"There's a Crocodile in the House" by Paul Cookson and Liz Million is out today, published by Otter-Barry Books (both books kindly supplied for review).

You won't have long to wait for this one, in fact it's out tomorrow so you've got no excuse - nip down to your favourite bookstore of choice in the morning for a copy of "The Last Tree" by Emily Haworth-Booth.

We've seen a huge explosion of books on the blog that deal with the climate crisis in several amazing and fairly direct ways, but sometimes you need a bit more 'oomph' in your story to make it accessible to younger readers, but also avoid the 'oh no not again' eyeroll from older book fans.

Emily manages this with aplomb in a tale that begins with a tribe of people all looking for a place to shelter.

The mountains are too windy, the valleys are too wet, the baking hot plains are no good either - and soon the folk find an amazing forest filled with trees.

The air is cooler there but not too cold, and those amazing leafy trees offer brilliant shelter.

That is - alas - until things start to go horribly wrong...


To greedily protect their new find, they come up with a plan to hack down all the trees, and cart them off to build a colossal wall, hopefully to avoid anyone else being able to move into their newfound home. A huge mistake, when only one tiny little withered tree is left. The last tree in fact.


But - as in the real actual here and now world - it's the kids that have the brains in this story. They realise that the answer does not lie in deforestation, the answer is to nurture that one last tree, encouraging it to grow stronger, and stronger, and stronger.

Emily has expertly conjured up a story that may seem quite simplistic at first, but does a brilliant job of holding up a mirror to our own world, where 'grown ups' seem hell bent in driving the planet towards the very brink, yet a strong steely-eyed army of youngsters are doing their level best to show us the error of our ways, and hopefully drag us back from the brink of irreparable climate change.

Sum this book up in a sentence: As we mentioned at the top of the review, this is a brilliant book to introduce kids to the concepts of ecology and saving the environment while giving older kids plenty to nod along to, and the whole package is extremely engaging, classy and dare we say even fun to read aloud?

"The Last Tree" by Emily Haworth-Booth is out tomorrow, 6th February 2020, published by Pavilion Children's Books (kindly supplied for review)