Though my daughter’s bookshelves include a treasured cache of stories from my own childhood, all of the Ladybird books that I once pored over have long since vanished. There is no family attic to rummage through but I do retain a vivid sense of them as objects and one thing I know for sure is […]

As a child growing up in the middle of nowhere, the nearest source of treats was a National Trust stately home. There was a tea room with seed cake and shortbread, an ice cream cart come summer, and a gift shop, whose floral scent I can still recall, filled with tinned sweets and plush toys. […]

For any budding Bear Grylls out there, The Lost Book of Adventure contains everything a child could need to set up camp in assorted wildernesses, complete with that fire-side essential: endless tales of derring-do. If you’re the kind of parent who views even glamping (and please, can retire that word already?) as roughing it, this book […]

Scratch and sniff has given way to scratch and learn. So I discovered the other day when I opened Ana Seixas’s book, Human Body (Wide Eyed, £11.99). I’ll admit I was a little sceptical. My daughter and I have both discovered plenty via a wonderful Usborne lift-the-flap title on the same topic. This book is […]

In our home, we’re obsessed with stars and planets at the moment – and just in time for prime stargazing season, too. I know this thanks to A Cat’s Guide to the Night Sky, one of three very different, equally – alright, I’ll say it – stellar new books for any budding astronomers in your […]

The first book my name appeared in was The Guinness Book of Records. Alright, so the closest I got to becoming a record-breaker was adjudicating a baked bean eating contest. I was an intern for the publisher and got to keep my company-issued sweatshirt with ‘scrutineer’ emblazoned on the back. I also received a name-check […]

It’s hard to think of a time when there’s been such a gulf between the world in which we parents are raising our children and the one in which we ourselves grew up. But whatever shape tomorrow takes, words will always matter, and an ability to choose the right ones will be vital. Nothing teaches […]

What to do on a rainy summer holiday Thursday? Bake a plum pie, of course. And not just any plum pie – the plum pie from one of our favourite picture books, Each Peach Pear Plum. Janet Ahlberg’s toothsome illustrations have been taunting us with their buttery perfection ever since we first began reading Allan […]

So which’ll it be? That dining dilemma is just one of the quandaries that fill John Burningham’s stand-alone sequel to his 40-year-old classic, Would You Rather. More Would You Rather brings to the page the same anarchic humour and whimsical, personality-packed pictures that first endeared its predecessor to children and adults alike. The formula remains […]