Come and celebrate Holly Webb's 30th awesome animal book with us!

We're still not quite sure how we managed it but we've crammed in a mammoth animal book reading session over the last month or so. What better reason to pledge to read at least 30 animal stories (other than absolutely loving animal books) than to celebrate the 30th title released in Holly Webb's brilliant "Animal Stories" for Stripes / Little Tiger.

"The Secret Kitten" by Holly Webb.

Could we really read 30 animal or animal-related books? Tough challenge? Naw, not tough at all for us - so over the past month or so, here's our list of titles which we've read (and in most cases reviewed) to help celebrate Holly's momentous achievement! In no particular order:

1) "The Special Guest" by Steve Smallman (QED Publishing)
2) "The Perfect Job for an Elephant" by Jodie Parachini and Caroline Pedler (QED Publishing)
3) "Jules and Nina Dine Out" by Anita Pouroulis and Agata Krawczyk (Digital Leaf)
4) "Cheep Cheep Pop Up Fun" (Little Tiger Press)
5) "Lily and Bear" by Lisa Stubbs (Boxer Books)
6) "Rabbits Don't Lay Eggs" by Paula Metcalf and Cally Johnson-Isaacs (Macmillan Children's Books)
7) "Catkin the Fairy Kitten" by Clare Bevan and Cally Johnson-Isaacs (Macmillan Children's Books)
8) "Chicken Mission - The Curse of Fogsham Farm" by Jennifer Gray and Hannah George (Faber and Faber)
9) "Hungry Roscoe" by David Plant (Flying Eye Books)
10) "Harry and Lil, The Hog, The Shrew and the Hullaballoo" by Julia Copus and Eunyoung Seo (Faber and Faber)
11) "Mister Mistofelees the Conjuring Cat" by T.S. Eliot and Arthur Robins (Faber and Faber)
12) "Tim and Towser" by Edward Ardizzone (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)
13) "You Can't Take an Elephant on the Bus" by Patricia Cleveland-Peck and David Tazzyman (Bloomsbury Publishing)
14) "Squishy McFluff Meets Mad Nana Dot" by Pip Jones and Ella Okstad (Faber and Faber)
15) "Beautiful Beasts" by Camilla De Le Bedoiyere (QED Publishing)
16) "Ice in the Jungle" by Ariane Hofmann-Maniyar (Child's Play)
17) "The Secret Kitten" by Holly Webb (Stripes)
18) "Fuzz McFlops" by Eva Funari (Pushkin Children's Books)
19) "I Need a Wee!" by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet (Simon and Schuster)
20) "Felicity Fly Meets the Dragon Fruit and Friends" by Christina Gabbitas and Ric Lumb (Poems and Pictures)
21) "Missing Jack" by Rebecca Elliott (Lion Publishing)
22) "Deadly Creatures" (Usborne Publishing)
23) "Those Pesky Rabbits" by Clara Flood (Templar Publishing)
24) "The Great Cheese Robbery" by Tim Warnes (Little Tiger Press)
25) "The Dog Detectives in an American Adventure" by Zoa and Monika Suska (Maverick Publishing)
26) "Never Tickle a Tiger" by Pamela Butchart and Marc Boutavant (Bloomsbury Publishing)
27) "The Hide and Scare Bear" by Ivan Bates (Templar Publishing)
28) "Lemur Dreamer" by Courtney Dicmas (Templar Publishing)
29) "Tales from Acorn Wood - Rabbit's Nap" by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (Macmillan Children's Books)
30) "Don't Chew on the Royal Slipper" by Kate Leake (Alison Green Books)

PHEW! That's quite some reading list, and I am sure there were more - but when you read 3 or 4 (or sometimes more) books a day, it's very easy to lose count.

Lucy the Poorly Puppy - Another huge favourite of Charlotte and her classmates at school.

Holly Webb's 30th Animal title "The Secret Kitten" is out now from Stripes / Little Tiger and you can find out more about Holly's "Animal Stories" range on the Little Tiger website.

The invisible cat is back and this time he's naughtier than ever! "Squishy McFluff Meets Mad Nana Dot" is the third adventure for Squishy and his extremely mischievous owner Ava. Regular 'Squish' fans will know that Squishy is Ava's invisible (imaginary) friend, and often encourages Ava to do the naughtiest things.

Ava's long suffering mum has a rather large tummy and am imminent new arrival means that Mum and Dad must dash off to hospital, packing Ava and Squishy off to stay with Mad Nana Dot. A lovely short-sighted but well meaning old lady, Dot thinks nothing of playing house host to Ava and her moggy though without her glasses she's never quite sure whether she can see Squishy or not.

Ava and Squishy don't take long before they're up to their usual tricks (as if filling the shed up with water wasn't naughty enough). A trip to the hairdresser's for Nana spells disaster and there's also a narrow squeak at the fishmongers too!

We laughed rather guiltily all the way through this - if you're the sort of parent who gets rather sniffy about books that highlight, nay almost encourage terrible behaviour in your younglings then look away, this will turn your hair white not green!

(Kids love it though, anything that allows them to live vicariously through a mischievous character usually ticks all their boxes!)

Charlotte's best bit: Almost from start to finish, Ava and Squishy's naughty tricks had her snorting with laughter (though I'm rather glad Charlotte is nothing like Ava at home!)

Daddy's Favourite bit: Please please PLEASE don't try the hair chemical mixing thing at home!!! Not even if your invisible cat tells you it's OK!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Faber and Faber)

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Squishy McFluff the Invisible Cat by Pip Jones and Ella Okstad (Faber and Faber)

Squishy McFluff in Supermarket Sweep by Pip Jones and Ella Okstad (Faber and Faber)

Pictures and paintings can tell a story without a dot of text or an explanatory paragraph. We know this from our visits to one of our favourite local destinations - the astonishing Ashmolean Museum, which we're lucky enough to have easy access to. Wandering through the amazing gallery in the museum, we often play the same game that the children in Quentin Blake's "Tell me a Picture - Adventures in Looking at Art" do.

Quentin Blake oversaw an exhibition at the National Gallery while serving as the first children's laureate back in 2001. The exhibition gathered together classic and contemporary art from artists and children's book illustrators with the intention of sparking conversation and encouraging exploration of art in a way that really appeals to us. Though Charlotte's more of a science geek, sharing a house with me means that she's been slowly introduced to art most of her young life and hopefully my rather ham-fisted attempts to get her interested in art might rub off on her later on (She's already far better at drawing and painting than I am, not constrained by the daft self-imposed rules some adults cling on to when they start putting pencil to paper).

Quentin's characters explore the gallery of work from wonderful artists like Gaudi, Emma Chichester-Clark and John Burmingham, passing comment on each work in ways that will spark your own children's interest and curiosity.

It's a fantastic idea to revisit Quentin's original project and put it together in a glorious hardback book. If you (like us) love all things arty, and love encouraging your children to follow the same path then this is definitely not to be missed.

Charlotte's best bit: Fascinating X-Ray work on a painting to reveal a hidden painting underneath

Daddy's Favourite bit: A truly awesome collection of art from some of our favourite artists, wrapped up in a book that just begs to be explored

(Kindly sent to us for review by Frances Lincoln Children's Books)

Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins. Sheer picture book perfection!

We're very excited about this book, can you tell?

"Rosie's Walk" is an utterly fantastic and legendary children's book by one of the most amazingly talented children's authors in the world, Pat Hutchins. Pat's tale of an unassuming hen out for a brisk constitutional is a masterpiece of storytelling as we see a wily fox succumb to cruel karma in various comedic ways as he tries to pounce on the hen as she passes by. I fell in love with this book as a tiny wee whippersnapper and couldn't wait to share it with Charlotte when we found a copy nestling between the stacks in our local library. Know what? It's still as fantastic today as it was all those years ago (and you've gotta love that groovy 70s artwork, maaaan!)

News that a sequel was coming had us checking and double-checking our peepers. A sequel? From Pat herself? Are you KIDDING?

No we're not, and in fact here is the awesome cover of "Where oh where is Rosie's Chick"...

Where oh Where is Rosie's Chick by Pat Hutchins.

Hachette have very kindly sent us a brilliant interview with Pat herself, including some insights into her fab art technique revisited here for the new book.

On the original inspiration: ‘I lived in New York for two years with my husband, Laurence. I couldn’t work whilst I was out there because I was a “secondary alien” according to the US government. This was actually great because it gave me the time to concentrate on my illustration. I wanted to write a book about animal noises, which I took in to see a publisher, who pointed out that the most interesting character was the fox who said nothing. I went home and thought about that and from there sprung Rosie’s Walk – the name Rosie is a friend’s pet hen when I was young. I envisioned the book as a sort of silent, funny, film, one where the audience or readers are in on a secret that Rosie doesn’t know – a ‘he’s behind you!’ idea. It’s special not only because it was my first book, but because I had my first son on the same week that the book was published!’

On Rosie’s distinctive palette: ‘I used a ‘pre-separated’ art technique which starts as black and white, and then you layer over different sheets of different colours on top. That’s where Rosie’s Walk’s palette comes from – so obviously for the orange, I layered over red and yellow… When I began Where, Oh Where, is Rosie’s Chick? I was going to include some blue, but it didn’t seem right.’ On returning to Rosie 47 years after initial publication: ‘I only wanted to re-visit Rosie if the story made sense – I didn’t want to create something just for the sake of it. But Rosie having a chick makes sense, and always gives Rosie a way to have another walk without just repeating the same story.’

On the success of Rosie’s Walk: ‘I only lived in New York for two years, so it’s funny that the book is sometimes seen as an American book. I did include a woodchuck in the book for the American audience… It was a lovely surprise when the book was successful so quickly – I was thrilled with my £250 for writing the book, I didn’t expect anything else! It’s really very nice that it’s still read and enjoyed today.’

About Pat Hutchins: Pat Hutchins was born Yorkshire, the sixth of seven children. She won a scholarship to Darlington School of Art in 1958 and continued studying illustration at Leeds College of Art, graduating in 1962. She worked for advertising agency in London to 1966 when she married Laurence Hutchins and moved to New York City for two years. There she worked on writing and illustrating her first picture book, Rosie's Walk, published in 1968.

Pat Hutchins has written novels for early readers, some illustrated by husband Laurence and more than two dozen picture books. Her work is widely acclaimed; she won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1974 for The Wind Blew.

Pat Hutchins also played the role of an artistic narrowboat owner in the classic children's television series, Rosie and Jim. She has two children and four grandson

We have heard so many great things about this book, and have seen just about every book blogger on the planet explode with sheer joy at the very mention of "Rosie Revere - Engineer" by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts, that we thought it was about bloomin' time we grabbed ourselves a copy and dived in headfirst.

We love Andrea Beaty's "Doctor Ted" for its outrageous and chaotic comedy, and we adore David Roberts' artwork from his reworked fairy tales to his awesome Dunderheads. So would we love this book as much as everyone else?

We do, you see Charlotte often visits work with mummy - and mummy works for a very busy engineering department for a huge University. Though the people mummy works with are probably more suited to Andrea and David's other divine book along similar lines, "Iggy Peck - Architect" (Which we also picked up and will be reviewing at a later date), the girls who come to study Engineering at mummy's work would absolutely love Rosie.

One of the many gorgeous spreads in "Rosie Revere - Engineer" celebrating the awesome women who took to the skies in the early pioneering days of flight.

Charlotte is fascinated by machinery and finding out how things work, and young Rosie is the same. She can turn a worthless pile of junk into a marvellous mechanical contraption. She can draw up a diagram of an astonishing invention to work around a problem. But Rosie's inventor life hasn't always been easy. After a rather cruel rebuttal at the hands of a daft old zookeeper, Rosie's confidence takes a knock but when she meets her inspirational Great Aunt Rose, has she finally found someone to encourage and understand her inventiveness?

Rosie sets out to impress her Great Aunt with a super-duper flying machine but the path to greatness doesn't always run smoothly, and even Rosie's wonderful great-auntie finds her contraptions more of a giggle than groundbreaking.

Is this the final straw to make Rosie throw in the towel?

A pile of junk is ripe for inventive minds!

You'll have to read the rest of this wonderful story to find out whether Rosie's resolve and determination win the day. This is a truly impressive and empowering book that will make your heart soar with inspiration. Andrea's rhymes might bend the rules in places but this is a rollicking read as your spirits lift and dive with each of Rosie's triumphs and setbacks.

A truly wonderful book creation, engineered to the highest quality!

Charlotte's best bit: Rosie's determined chin - not a million miles away from a certain other little girl's!

Daddy's Favourite bit: Utterly spellbinding and brilliant, the perfect book for little girls and boys who'd much rather turn a pile of lego into their next great creation than slob out in front of the TV or the tablet. Rosie ROCKS!

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Zephyr Takes Flight by Steve Light (Candlewick Press)

This is something new and refreshingly different! An illustrated story-poem-book about a cat called Panda who loves Bamboo, and a girl called Amanda who loves Cats too!

Our horrid attempts to rhyme will henceforth cease as we tell you all about this lyrical and singsong little book with perfect dreamy rhymes and really unique illustrations. Cat (Panda) tries to point out to an inquisitive little girl the reason for his name. As we all know, cats are quite aloof (love the description "haughty") and cat really can't understand why Amanda doesn't see the logic behind a black and white feline being named after another well known Bamboo-loving black and white animal.

Children of all ages will love reading the nonsense rhymes, and will love discovering all the tiny little details in the fab illustrations. Melanie and Charlie's book is as exquisite and classy as Panda himself!

Charlotte's best bit: Spotting all the black and white animals that crop up throughout the story (see if you can spot the killer whale!)

Daddy's Favourite bit: A really unique and refreshing poem book, absolutely perfect for tucking into your bag to keep little ones amused while out and about

(Kindly sent to us for review by Button Books)

One look at this book's joyful cover will be enough to convince you that spring is on the way, and there's no better time to dive out into the garden and start planning what to plant and where to plant it.

Adorable Lulu loves getting out into the garden with her mum, and we share her enjoyment as Lulu is given her own crop of seeds and starts planting them, watering them and weeding around them.

Be patient Lulu, because when the sun begins to shine, those little seedlings can turn into something quite spectacular! Encouraging children to have a go and grow their own flowers, fruit and vegetables is a simple thing we can all do and we just loved how celebratory the Lulu books are about something that takes a little effort and perhaps a little bit of a wait, but reaps such amazing rewards (unless you're me, I am so not green fingered in any way but thankfully Mummy and Charlotte are!)

Join in with the fun with Lulu, she's our kinda gal!

Charlotte's best bit: Wonderful wonderful sunflowers explode into life to reward Lulu for her efforts! Hooray!

Daddy's Favourite bit: An adorable little girl growing her own flowers for the first time in a simple but really enjoyable story from Anna and Rosalind. Superb!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Alanna Publishing)

Once again those awesome folk at Letterbox Library have put together an absolutely stunning shortlist for the 2015 Little Rebels Book Awards.

The award winner will be announced at the London Radical Bookfair on 9th May 2015 (see below for links to the Little Rebels Book Awards and the London Radical Bookfair).

A total of eight amazing titles have been shortlisted this year for the Little Rebels Children’s Book Award for radical children’s fiction. The shortlist includes two titles from the indie, “small but mighty children’s publisher”, Catnip Publishing Ltd. It also includes two picture books which set out to explicitly challenge gender stereotypes.

The Little Rebels Children’s Book Award is now in its 3rd year. The shortlisted 2014 titles include 4 chapter books/fiction and 4 picture books; these are:

Trouble on Cable Street by Joan Lingard (Catnip Books), set in 1936 London during the rise of Mosley’s Fascist Blackshirts.

Girl With a White Dog by debut novelist Anne Booth (Catnip Books), exploring prejudice and discrimination and linking the Holocaust directly through to the present.

Scarlet Ibis by Gill Lewis (Oxford University Press) which examines the care system and attitudes towards mental health; this is Gill Lewis’ 2nd appearance on the Little Rebels shortlist after Moon Bear was selected last year.

Nadine Dreams of Home by Bernard Ashley (Barrington Stoke), a dyslexia-friendly book about a child who has fled the Congolese civil conflict to settle in the UK.

Shh! We Have a Plan by Chris Haughton (Walker Books); a subtle picture book about kindness and friendship winning out over force and enmity.

Grandma by another debut author/illustrator, Jessica Shepherd (Child’s Play); a child- friendly exploration of dementia.

Made by Raffi by Craig Pomranz, illustrated by Margaret Chamberlain (Janetta Otter-Barry Books/Frances Lincoln) about a boy who feels different from the other boys at school.

Pearl Power by Mel Elliott, published by newcomer indie, I Love Mel (distributed by Turnaround Publisher Services) about a little girl and her encounters with gender inequality.

We'll be posting a reminder article a little closer to the event in May, but in the meantime do visit the following links for more info on this very special shortlist.

The Little Rebels Award

www.littlerebelsaward.wordpress.com.

The London Radical Bookfair

www.londonradicalbookfair.wordpress.com.

Imagine being uprooted from your familiar home, having to leave your friends behind, and having to start school in a whole new location. Many children face this scenario every day, and for a child it can be exciting and sometimes quite traumatic.

"Ice in the Jungle" is a lovely little book designed to help children cope with the stress and strain of a family move, centring on an adorable little polar bear named Ice. Ice's mummy has to move away with a new job to somewhere entirely unfamiliar and new. Ice and Mum are moving to...THE JUNGLE!

It's far too hot, school is strange and Ice finds it difficult to fit in. Her school friends all seem to be fairly wrapped up in their own little lives, and as for the food - Ice has never tasted a fish like that bizarre yellow curved one given to her by one of her classmates.

Ice starts to feel lonely and sad but sometimes it takes a while to make new friends - but when you do, it smoothes the way when life is full of upheaval.

Ariane Hofmann-Maniyar has drawn together some brilliant elements in this book that can really allay a child's fears and perhaps even help children who are naturally shy to cope with the sometimes difficult task of making new friends. It certainly delighted Charlotte and I (Charlotte is naturally shy so she instantly bonded with Ice in this tale). Really love this one!

Charlotte's best bit: Ice spluttering on a banana! Ewwwwww!

Daddy's Favourite bit: A touching little tale perfectly put together to help children cope with the stresses and strains of a move to a new location or school.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Child's Play Books)

QED Publishing's "Storytime" range features great little stories for younger children. With "The Special Guest", Charlotte took one look at the cover and knew exactly what to expect - but we can't resist a tale that sets a vainglorious character up for a bit of a fall.

In this case that character is Zebra, who receives a royal invitation to dinner from The King of the Jungle. Yep, a hungry lion. So add those two things together and you can expect complete mayhem.

Zebra gets carried away with his preparations and primping - and before he can even set out, there's complete chaos. He needs a bath, needs his mane trimming and his stripes retouching - and that's before other animals also horn in on the act (in Rhino's case, quite literally) to see if THEY can invite themselves to the royal buffet.

Lion is a gnarly and sly old beast though, he's going to get his dinner at all costs and really can't wait to tuck into a nice juicy zebra steak or two! Will Zebra escape Lion's hungry jaws? And why on earth has Elephant painted his bottom all stripy?

Little ones will chuckle along with this hilarious tale. Steve Smallman's art is always absolutely brilliant, and we rather like the Zebra despite all his preening and pomposity.

Charlotte's best bit: Lion coming to a prickly end at the hands (or should we say spines) of a cute porcupine. Owch!

Daddy's Favourite bit: A great little story that sets up its stall right from the cover, but still contains enough giggles and surprises to keep your little ones entertained!

(Kindly sent to us for review by QED Publishing)