Get ready for the craziest collection of kids you're ever going to meet in this fizzingly energetic and fabulous book!

 You know what it's like, don't you mums and dads. The prospect of the long summer holiday fills kids with excitement and fills most parents with dread (particularly working parents like us who would absolutely love to spend 6 weeks holiday with their little ones but can't afford to).

Around week 2, most kids enter that weird torpor where they've absolutely no idea what they want to do, so kick around the house bored out of their tiny little skulls.

Books to the rescue then! These two new "Where's Wally" activity titles from Martin Handford and Walker Books are so jam packed with fun things to do, stickers, observation challenges and a ton of other puzzles and activities, that your children will (hopefully) be completely engrossed by them for hour after hour.


"Where's Wally? Across Lands" and "Where's Wally? In Outer Space" cover the surface of the globe and then launch out into the cosmos while we search those busy and exquisitely detailed page spreads for that red-and-white-striped bobble-hatted fella and his friends Wanda, Odlaw and the wizard.

The observation challenges are still as tough as old boots (I think it takes a younger pair of eyes than mine to spot Wally and his pals). There are ace drawing and colouring challenges though, and I can definitely join in with those at least!

Each of the titles features over 100 stickers so once your little ones have exhausted their attempts to find Wally, they can get sticking.

These are fantastic books, we really can't get enough of the detail in these - each illustration truly does reveal something different every time you flick through, and there are so many spot challenges and extra quest items to find, it may well take you the whole 6 weeks to polish both books off completely.

Groovy word searches and colouring fun are dotted throughout the books to keep you busy!

Charlotte's best bit: Wanda is her fave so she always makes a bee line for trying to find her first.

Daddy's favourite bit: These books could well be the answer to your prayers this long summer holiday. If the weather is rubbish or great, grab one (or both) of these and get busy spotting, doodling, solving, colouring and sticking!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Walker Books)

"Where's Wally Across Lands" and "Where's Wally in Outer Space"

Written and Illustrated by Martin Handford

Published by Walker Books

Publication Date: 2nd June 2016

Father's Day is coming up (June 19th, set a date in your diary) and here's a book that would be a great pressie for a little one aiming to encourage dad to do their bedtime reading duty!

Good lord! Can you believe this awesome little mouse is 25! Our Second Book of the Week is the fabulous "Maisy Goes to Bed" by Lucy Cousins...

A ticklish take on "Jonah and the Whale" is our first Book of the Week this week, as Alex T. Smith's awesome doggy hero makes a smooth transition to big picture books!

So many things triggered this week's editorial. Raging angry tweets from a repentant dad describing how a culture of 'bants' and braggardly locker-room sexism continuously leads boys and men to consider the sexist treatment of women acceptable (and, ugh, harmless) normal everyday behaviour.

His impassioned tweets were thought provoking. Not least of all because the man had a daughter, and realised that at some point in her life she would be on the receiving end of such behaviour herself.

The other trigger was being the only male at a female-only table at a pub, listening to mums talking about their own fears of walking down a street - even in broad daylight and the fears they had for their own daughters.

Needless to say, these things strike a chord with me. A dad, writing a book blog with my daughter who is the apple of my eye and from the moment she screamed at the top of her lungs when she popped out of her mum, I swore to do everything in my power to look after her, care for her and nurture her.

Naturally there's only so much you can do to bring up your daughter to be strong, wary, worldly-wise and non-accepting of any sexist behaviour but the real effort is in educating our sons, not our daughters, to buck a trend and become a stereotype that has existed for far, far too long.

On a daily basis, I see women being harassed, getting unwanted attention, having to deal with 'harmless' flirting from men who have absolutely no idea what wretched arsehats they're being (apologies, I will try to keep my language under control). On one hand it's pathetic watching these idiots somehow dream their way through life believing that they're some sort of 'catch'. On the other hand it's menacing, because there's absolutely no doubt that men like this still hold a belief that it's a fine, fine way to assert their measly level of power over women, who are intelligent and wary enough not to respond.

Listening to the mum's anecdotes was spine chilling - more so than reading the tweets from the guy mentioned at the top of this article as these were people I know, kids I know. I sat silently listening, feeling like I needed to interject to apologise at every given opportunity for being male but too terrified to do so.

What can be done? Where can you start to tackle such a gigantic and all-encompassing problem that stems from childhood behaviour not addressed or discussed, that continues to grow like some festering rot, that leeches into practically everything that has impact and influence on our daily lives?

It has to start with boys - there is absolutely no reason why mums and dads cannot raise children who understand what it means to treat everyone with respect and as an equal. There is no excuse for that sleeveless beer-gut sexist caricature of the male species to continue to exist this far into the 21st century, no more than it was acceptable for that caricature to exist beyond the last few decades of the 20th. We see so many cases where fervent denial is quite often followed by aggression whenever high profile examples of everyday sexism become loud enough to hit the press or the media.

I've never understood the mentality of someone who thinks that they're somehow being charming by being overtly (and quite often sexually) threatening to someone they perceive as 'weaker' or an easy target. It disgusts me just as much as it disgusted the guy and the mums who inspired this blog post. Teach your sons that the modern world has no place for this crap any more.

Here's a book that could have been MADE for us. As regular blog visitors will know, most weekends see us loading up a picnic, getting our walking boots on and heading for the great outdoors. As the sunshine shyly peeks through the crowds, we can't wait to get out there and explore.

"The Usborne Outdoor Book" collects together some truly fantastic ideas to inspire your little ones to explore the 'big outside' around them. Even if you live in the middle of a bustling city, there are wild spaces that you can find, and parks to explore where you'll be able to put some of the brilliant activities in this book to the test.

Each section will give you awesome things to make, help you identify plant and animal species and even give you some games to play while out in the countryside or exploring your park. The book is packed with fantastic factual nuggets and fascinating nature subjects. Like I said at the top of the review, it's practically made for us.

Usborne are encouraging you to keep your own checklist of things that you've done during your trips so check out their inspiring list on the Usborne website


We've still got a couple to tick off (haven't yet made a bees nest, and it's been too cloudy lately for stargazing) but we're well on our way to completing our challenge. See how you get on!

"The Usborne Outdoor Book" is out now from Usborne Publishing

We're definitely loving the way that some publishers are playing with different book formats for younger children. When a book crosses the boundaries between being something you read and something you can play and interact with, the real fun begins for younger children who adore colourful illustrations and fun reading opportunities.

So it is with the fabulous "Animals are Delicious" which is actually a wonderfully presented 'box set' of board books that unfold into three huge concertina layouts detailing the food chains of different types of animals.

Whether they swim, fly or run, animals have to eat - and sometimes they have to eat other animals.

Take to the air, the seas or the forest and find out all about animal food chains

It's thankfully not quite as grisly as it sounds, thanks to some truly brilliant illustrations that almost leap off the page at you. Really crisp and clean designs are just the start of this booky adventure - because if you flip the books over, you get an awesome high-contrast set of images that will work for younger children who can easily see more sharply when the images are monochrome.

Flip the book for even more details on the species in the book. Great high-contrast designs here

We enlisted the help of Charlotte's little 2 year old cousin who absolutely ADORED these books. Her giggles of glee (and her brilliant attempts to make the various animal noises - have you ever heard a 2 year old pretending to be a fox? It's hilarious!) were infectious so Charlotte really enjoyed reading the books with her and to her.

What a fantastic and original idea!

"Animals are Delicious" is out now from Phaidon Publishing.

Look out, beware, something lurks in the neighbourhood but three brave little animals aren't scared...yet!

I must admit, I couldn't help but steal this book away from Charlotte at every opportunity. As a dyed-in-the-wool doodler, I love books that not only give you the opportunity to doodle away - but give you a fresh perspective with neat ideas to get you sharpening your pencils for a bit of creative fun.

"Grids - A Drawing Book for Squares" by Jacky Bahbout is a doodler's dream. Packed with interesting geometric patterns and designs, it will kick start your imagination as you realise just how much fun you can have with pixel art, perspective drawing and grid lines.

Hidden away inside the book is a huge selection of really cool drawing exercises that will have you thinking in different dimensions. Personally I utterly adore drawing in squares (I think it's a misspent youth largely wasted making weird little games on my ZX Spectrum where all the graphics were made out of 8 x 8 grids - I spent AGES poring over graph paper to try and make natural-looking game graphics and characters but never really got very far!)

Grids is a work of genius. Kids may think that the exercises are complicated at first, but with some brilliant examples to follow, they'll soon be creating really intriguing works of art themselves.

Released in good time for the long summer holidays and those 'bored' hours where kids will wail and squeak about having nothing to do, "Grids" is perfect for your little pencil pushers so pick up a copy as soon as you can!

Charlotte's favourite bit: Drawing amazingly intricate animals from square templates

Daddy's favourite bit: I just loved that forced perspective graph paper, drawing cityscapes and buildings using that.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Thames and Hudson)

"Grids - A Drawing Book for Squares"

Written and Illustrated by Jacky Bahbout

Published by Thames and Hudson

Publication Date: 6th June 2016