When I was a wee whippersnapper, both sets of grandparents had dogs. Toby (The Webb side) was a mischievous Manchester Terrier cross who liked to sit in the front seat of my Nan's old Hillman Minx and 'drive' to our destination (but he'd sleep all the way home in the back seat, content he'd done his job). My other Gran, Granny May, had Dachsunds. Two. William and Fred. William was a svelte little fellah, Fred was the dog equivalent of 'portly' but vicariously 'owning' dogs this way probably meant I never really wished for one of my own.

The girl in Helga Bansch's sublime book "I Want a Dog!" really wants a dog, really really wants a dog. Not a Dog puzzle. Not a knitted dog, nor a wooden dog on wheels, but a real live dog.

She begs, pleads and badgers her parents but they claim the apartment is too small, so the poor lass never gets her wish. Until one day she has a genius idea. Advertise to 'borrow' one.

What follows is a touching story, beautifully illustrated with lovely painted panels, and introducing us to Rollo, a playful, smart and funny Dachsund who has such a winning doggy smile that you'll just fall hook line and sinker in love with him. As Charlotte did when she read this book.

There are so many books of this ilk out there, child wants pet, child can't have pet, child settles for something else - but this is just beautifully told, and beautifully illustrated. A well deserving book of the week.

Charlotte's best bit: Rollo being naughty and stealing the girl's 'tie bow' from her hair (She always calls them tie bows!)

Daddy's favourite bit: Rollo's smile. A dog smile, but a smile that just gets you 'right there'

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars, book of the week

Though we predominantly deal with print books here at ReadItDaddy, we're extending our coverage to e-books in all shapes and sizes. Though "The Hare with the Pearl Earring" is available directly through Amazon Kindle and published by KiteReaders (you'll need to obtain it by WhisperNet if you want to get hold of it, and believe me, you will!), it's such an interesting book that it really deserves shouting about.
Julia Dweck's core idea is to introduce children to the intoxicating intricacies of the art world through picture books and anthropomorphised animal characters. Picking famous artists like Van Gogh (or Van Crow as he appears in this book) and Vermeer, and showing off alternative versions of their most famous works will undoubtedly make inquisitive little souls (such as Charlotte) want to seek out the original artists and their works of art.

It's such a genius idea. I really hope that this gets picked up by a publisher and turned into a 'print' picture book (call me an old luddite but there's still nothing like the 'real deal' when it comes to children's picture books). Either that or I hope it makes it over here for the Kindle Fire's launch, because this will be going straight to the top of the download list when it does.

The Hare With The Pearl Earring (on US Amazon Kindle Store)

Little Tiger Press is 25 Years Old, hooray! The publishers of a great many well loved children's books over the past quarter of a century, Little Tiger Press are re-releasing the classic children's tale "I Don't Want To Go To Bed" in August, to celebrate their anniversary.

It's the story (the all too familiar story) of a little tiger who won't go to sleep, and his exasperated mother  who decides to let him stay up all night to see what he's been missing.

When the little tiger goes searching for friends to play with, he finds out exactly how quiet it can be at night.

A charming and beautifully illustrated book, it's the perfect way for Little Tiger Press to celebrate 25 years of producing excellent quality children's books. Stay tuned for a ReadItDaddy review soon!

If there's one thing that should make our nation swell with pride, it's the sheer quality and class of our children's books. Time and again on ReadItDaddy I'm asked why most of the books we review rate so highly. The simple answer is that they really are that good, and it's almost impossible to find anything negative to say about the majority of books that come our way.

Which is why it's lovely to show Charlotte books like "The Yoga Ogre" that are funny, well written, deliciously illustrated and set the bar so high that it makes you wonder how you'd ever break into children's writing or illustration yourself (I'm trying, believe me I'm trying!)

Ogden, the Ogre in this story is a lovely well-meaning fellow (who doesn't eat goats, just an entertaining array of pies 12 times a day). Waking up with that all too familiar (to me) feeling that his tum is wider than it is tall, our Ogre chum decides to embark on some exercise and tries various sports (with hilarious results).

"How about Yoga?" the townspeople suggest, after Ogden's various failed attempts at keep fit end up nearly levelling the town's most important buildings. So Ogden dutifully tries it out.

Here at ReadItDaddy we already love Simon Rickerty's illustrations (as seen in our previous Book of the Week "Unfortunately") and coupled with Peter Bently's entertaining rhymes, The Yoga Ogre is another surefire hit.

Charlotte's best bit: The horses hiding when Odgen decides to take up being a jockey

Daddy's favourite bit: Identifying all too readily with Ogden's woes about his large tum

Rating: A well deserved 5 out of 5 stars - Book of the Week

(This book was kindly supplied for review by Simon and Schuster Children's Books)

If we were crazy enough to have cats at ReadItDaddy Towers I would definitely ensure that at least one of them was A) A ginger tom and B) called Keith. Keith the Cat with the Magic Hat is the latest children's book from Sue (Barry, the Fish with Fingers) Hendra. As you'd expect from Sue, it's a slightly surreal but ridiculously adorable story of a young cat trying to impress his peers when an unfortunate incident with an ice cream cone makes him look a bit daft in front of them.

Keith shrugs off the incident by claiming that the ice cream cone is, in fact, a magic hat - and the chocolate flake is Keith's all-powerful magic wand. By pure luck Keith's magic fakery impresses his friends enough, but can Keith summon enough magic to defeat an angry dog?

You'll have to read the book to find out. Sue Hendra's style is to compliment her superbly sharp and cute illustrations with entertaining stories, and Keith the Cat is no exception. If you loved Barry the Fish with Fingers or Norman the Slug with a Silly Shell, then this is more charming silliness in the same mould and we love it!

Charlotte's best bit - Keith waving his magic wand and coming up with a very long string of magic words

Daddy's favourite bit - Sue Hendra's pin-sharp and beautiful illustrative style.

Rating - 4 out of 5 stars

(Please note - This book was kindly supplied by Simon and Schuster for review)

Regular ReadItDaddyers will know that for years I've been scribbling away in the vague pretence of being artistic. 3 years at art college aside, I'm still pretty hopeless when it comes to drawing anything specific so love any tutorials or books that show you the process broken down and simplified.

The Walter Foster "Disney Magic Art / Learn to Draw" series of books are legendary stateside so it was quite something to find a bunch of them tucked away in the various merchandise shops on our recent trip to Disneyland Paris (more of which will be coming up on my wife's excellent travel blog, CanIWalkMummy). Prices for these vary from "That's crazy cheap" to "Oh my god, HOW MUCH?" but at just under 7 Euros a pop, I grabbed three.

1) Learn to Draw: Disney Princesses
2) Learn to Draw: Tangled
3) Learn to Draw: Toy Story

The books (by various artists and authors including the excellent Heather Knowles a legendary DeviantArtist) strip down the process of drawing famous Disney characters to the bare bones, giving budding artists some inspiration on how to draw the characters in various poses themselves.

The Disney Princesses book is the toughest to work through, they are extremely difficult to get absolutely spot on even when the instructions are followed to the letter. Again the Rapunzel book is similarly tough but the Toy Story book is the best of the bunch (probably because most of the Toy Story characters are fairly easy to draw anyway). Each character starts off as a bunch of gestural construction strokes and basic shapes, then gradually you pencil in the features, the detail and then top the whole thing off with colour and shading.

If you've any interest in drawing Disney characters (or have an extremely artistic 4 year old daughter who demands the very best quality from your scribblings!) then these are worth grabbing. They are available through Amazon though be warned, most of the books are under 20 pages long so if you think a pound a page is good value for the Disney Princess book, you won't mind some of the exorbitant charges resellers are laying on these.

Charlotte's best bit: Learning to draw Snow White and Belle

Daddy's favourite bit: Drawing Jessie from Toy Story

Rating - 4 out of 5 stars

Dear Zoo is 30 years old! Astonishing isn't it, and to celebrate the 30th Anniversary - and of course the book's timeless appeal, a collection of new activities, games and puzzles have been created by Paul Lamond Games, based on Rod Campbell's original book and illustrations.

'Dear Zoo' was a massive favourite of Charlotte's when she was still at the book chewing stage - enjoying the 'surprise' behind every lift the flap page.

Though she's a little old for the puzzle, it's perfect for toddlers who are just beginning to find their way with shapes and jigsaws, comprising two jigsaw puzzles (a four piece puzzle featuring that naughty monkey and an 8 piece puzzle featuring that rather large elephant from the Dear Zoo book).

We buy quite a lot of puzzles for Charlotte and are often disappointed by the quality of puzzles meant for younger children. They're often very frustrating to put together (too flimsy, and often don't sit flat or stay flat even on a very flat surface) so it was nice to note that the Paul Lamond puzzle was of the highest quality, with good sized chunky pieces that stay put.

The box (decorated like the crate in the Dear Zoo story, neat!) is attractive and screams of a quality product.

Check out the rest of the Dear Zoo anniversary range on the Paul Lamond Games website.

Charlotte's best bit - Nice chunky pieces, easy to place and handle

Daddy's favourite bit - Very high quality product, nicely packaged and boxed. Perfect for toddlers.

Rating - 4 out of 5 stars

(This item was generously supplied to us for review through Highlight PR)

Argyle and Bute Borough Council are getting a hard and fast lesson on 'The Streisand Effect' this morning after stepping in to stop a child blogging about her school dinner.

9 year old Martha Payne writes (or at least 'wrote') an entertaining light-hearted blog detailing her daily lunch. Well written and entertaining (even on occasions when she forgot her camera and had to hand-draw her meal with the cutest illustrations ever), Martha's blog was fairly innocuous but the powers that be deemed it 'harmful to the council's reputation and undermining services offered in council-run schools'.

Martha was hauled out of her lessons one morning, taken to the head teacher's office and told to cease and desist her blog, and cease taking photos of her lunch (Martha's dad explained on the blog that it was not the school's decision, and that they had actually been quite supportive of Martha and her blog, the decision was purely Argyle and Bute Council's).

A petition has already sprung up to try and reverse the decision. Martha's blog wasn't just a school dinner blog, it also involved raising money for food charities around the world to feed the starving (and a separate JustGiving account has been set up to help Martha reach her 2K target. Somehow I think she's going to manage it!)

The media has exploded with this story. The Daily Telegraph contacted Argyle and Bute Council for comment (they refused) and Jay Rayner, Food Critic, got in touch with someone at the Council Offices to confirm the decision and they did (as doubts were raised whether a council would be this stupidly heavy handed - guess what folks, this is the UK, of course they would!)

It seems a real shame that a child can start up a fairly well-meaning (and quite funny) blog, and get jumped on like this, in an era when the press would have you believe that most kids can't string two words together without resorting to txt spk. Go Martha. You rock, and I really hope that this continues to blow up spectacularly in Argyle and Bute Borough Council's face. With the amount of coverage it's getting on Twitter and Facebook, there are going to be a lot of red faces at the council offices this morning.

Oh my, now how on earth are we going to review this without breaking our hard-and-fast rule of 'no spoilers?'

Alright let's give it a try. Good Little Wolf is a rather cute, tiny and friendly little fellow who is kind to everyone, always eats his vegetables and always looks after granny. But something deep down inside him tells him that there's more to being a wolf, so when he meets a big bad wolf walking through the forest one day, Little Wolf undergoes something of an identity crisis.

Nadia Shireen's lovely simple illustrations (which reminded me, rather deliciously, of The Moomins for some reason) underpin a neat and clever little story of exact opposites. Little Wolf is undeniably cute, and (struggle, strain, try not to spoil the book) the end of this story made me want to hug Nadia Shireen for bucking the age-old children's book trend of ending books in a particularly predictable way.

Children love the baddies in a story, and they certainly seem to love anything to do with wolves (whether Red Riding Hood is involved or not) so Nadia Shireen's thoughtful clever mashing together of classic fairy tale ideas with something more contemporary and original is a real breath of fresh air. Loved it!

Charlotte's best bit: Little Wolf's knitting ability


Daddy's favourite bit: The way the book ends. Wish more children's authors would do things like that!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars