REVIEWERS IN THIS ISSUE BfK Under 5s – Pre -School/Nursery/Infant continued


Brian Alderson is founder of the Children’s Books History Society and a former Children’s Books Editor for The Times. Gwynneth Bailey is a freelance education and children’s book consultant. Clive Barnes, formerly Principal Children’s Librarian, Southampton City is a freelance researcher and writer. Diane Barnes, was a librarian for 20 years, mostly as a children’s specialist, working in Kent, Herts, Portsmouth and Hampshire, and Lusaka (Zambia) with the British Council. Jill Bennett is the author of Learning to Read with Picture Books and heads up a nursery unit. Rebecca Butler writes and lectures on children’s literature. Jane Churchill is a children’s book consultant. Caroline Downie has been a Children’s Librarian for over 20 years, working in a variety of settings. Stuart Dyer is an Assistant Head Teacher in a Bristol primary school. Sean Edwards is Haringey’s Principal Librarian for Children and Youth. Anne Faundez is a freelance education and children’s book consultant. Janet Fisher is a children’s literature consultant. Geoff Fox is former Co-Editor (UK) of Children’s Literature in Education, but continues to work on the board and as an occasional teller of traditional tales. Sarah Gallagher is a headteacher and director of Storyshack.org www.storyshack. org


Christine Hammill teaches in a college of further education and is also an author Ferelith Hordon is a former children’s librarian and editor of Books for Keeps Matthew Martin is a primary school teacher.


Sue McGonigle is a Lecturer in Primary Education and Co-Creator of www.lovemybooks.co.uk Margaret Pemberton is a school library consultant and blogs at margaretpemberton.edublogs.org. Val Randall is Head of English and Literacy Co-ordinator at a Pupil Referral Unit. Sue Roe is a children’s librarian. Elizabeth Schlenther is the compiler of www.healthybooks.org.uk Lynne Taylor is Schools Programme Manager, Paper Nations. Nicholas Tucker is honorary senior lecturer in Cultural and Community Studies at Sussex University. Sue Unstead is a writer and publishing consultant


Ed’s Choice


There’s A Bug on My Arm That Won’t Let Go





David Mackintosh, HarperCollins Children’s Books, 9780008135089, £12.99 hbk


 that won’t let go. But I think it quite likes it there – so I better look after it.


Here is a picture book that stands out, not just for the witty text through which we


hear the reasonable


voice of the child who has taken a particular stance and will hold on to its proper conclusion (yes, the bug says “Goodbye”). This voice is direct and immediate, drawing us in without any unnecessary description or verbage to experience that particular day, hearing echoes of the adults, meeting the cat – and the  the medium of the child. Then there are the illustrations, distinctive,


this satisfying picture book show us child and lion sharing wonderful times together. No parents, no adults at all, but a lion who gently leads Caro        friends in the outside world, and that these friends will bring colour into her life. Mum (although we don’t see her) also brings colour by inviting Caro’s new friends in to paint the walls so they are no longer white. This means that Caro cannot see her lion friend anymore, and she is sad until snow comes and he is once again visible. She learns that he will always be there if she needs him, and she is able to get on with her life and her friends in this knowledge.


Perfectly


imagined and gloriously painted, we       experience by using her imagination and inventing a being to help her through.


The pictures have plenty


of detail (there is a companionable black cat throughout) and yet are given space to develop the theme. From the dark of the night of Caro and her mum’s arrival, to the brightness of the interior of the house, to the colour that comes along ultimately – all this mirrors Caro’s moods and her adjustment to her new situation. A beautiful book which will repay reading many times. ES


Run, Elephant, Run 


Patricia MacCarthy, Otter-Barry Books, 32pp, 978-1-9109-5911-4, £12.99 hbk


This beautiful picture book is subtitled An Indonesian Rainforest Adventure and, while the story itself is slight, a baby elephant runs through the storm-lashed rainforest to escape a


22 Books for Keeps No.227 November 2017


textured, original. Mackintosh’s energetic lines combine with a minimal palette to create movement, emotion and atmosphere. Pages are designed to bring a restless variety to the narrative ranging from full page spreads to vignettes and on occasion the storyboard comic strip. Here is a picture book that stands  interesting – outstanding. FH


 mother and herd, the book as a whole has great visual impact.


The storm


begins gradually and its power builds through each double page spread as plants and creatures bend, twist, sway and run to escape it. The text is minimal but very effective, full of onomatopoeia to enhance the read- aloud experience and with a clever use of font and shape to convey the sound effects. The coloured- pencil illustrations are stunning, full of shape, colour tones, lines and movement, giving a real feel of the   tropical rainforest creatures to spot, a perfect incentive for eager readers to go back and search again. All in all, this simple-seeming picture book has a great deal to offer, an appealing animal character, a story in which the sense of danger resolves happily, a clever use of text and style to increase language development, an introduction to a beautiful and threatened habitat with endangered wildlife and an opportunity to explore, learn and look closely via compelling illustrations. SR


Luna loves Library Day 


Joseph Coelho, ill. Fiona Lumbers, Andersen Press, 32pp, 978-1-7834-4548-6 £11.99 hbk


Even from the end-papers, where assorted children are portrayed having fun, some of them with books, this is a charming book, and the fact that it’s dedicated by the author to the libraries where he did his homework and discovered magic is also endearing to this lover of libraries.


Luna, who is mixed race, gets her books and her library card ready with Mum, and Mum drops her off at the library where she meets Dad, who ‘always has his head in a book’. In the Big Book section they choose the ‘Big book of dinosaurs, Mummies and unexplained mysteries’ (spy the Mummy hiding on the shelf!). Luna loves bugs, but they make Dad go ‘errrnnnnngggggggg!’ (and there are insects to look out for) – but into the book bag goes ‘Maurice Mandible’s Mini-monsters’. Dad knows lots of magic tricks, including, thinks Luna sadly, how to disappear, and she wants to learn how to bring him back, so she chooses ‘Marabella’s       a history book about where he grew up, a place where palm trees grow, so that goes into the book bag, too, and then a fairy tale, which is inserted as a smaller book-within-the-book. ‘The       tells of two very different people who love their little daughter, at home both in the ocean and in holes, but they cannot be happy together, so the Troll  story and have a big hug on a squashy library chair. Luna checks out her books and goes home, her book bag full of memories about adventure, magic and Dad. Luna loves library day, and so do we.


Joseph Coelho is a successful


performance poet, and he proves equally adept at writing for young children in this simple but very effective story,


illustrations by relatively new artist Fiona Lumbers. Children, and adults, who love books and libraries will relish this. DB


What Makes Me a Me? 


Ben Faulks, ill. David Tazzyman, Bloomsbury, 32pp, 978 1 40886725 9, £6.99 pbk


The sparkly cover of this picture book and its jaunty, clever rhymes will be enjoyed by both parent and child, not just for the content but for the often small things that adults will understand rather better than their offspring. For instance, when the little boy is comparing himself to many other things, like a snail, or a dog, or a tree and deciding he only shares some aspects of these things, he tells  the boy who lives next door. Together we play dinosaurs that stomp and chomp and roar! But mum will often tell me, and she’ll look me in the eye.        I really don’t know why.’


The little


      that we knew he would all along: he is himself, unique and different and special and that’s the way it should be. The text is integrated to a high degree and accompanies the jolly  large or small, curvy or straight       Jolly fun! ES


with delightful


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32