Showing 1-16 of 24 Results.
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Humour and heart in the same breath, on every page.
Lauren Kate - 15/06/2012 |
My first memory of The Tiger who Came to Tea is hearing it at story time in nursery school. I love the way that Sophie and her mother treat the arrival of the tiger as they would a neighbour by politely inviting him in. At four I was fascinated that the tiger managed to drink ‘all the water in the tap’. Judith Kerr’s illustrations and storytelling are full of charm. Definitely a classic.
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
The story of Mary Lennox, the unloved, unloveable orphan warmed to life along with her secret garden, gave me one of my first female heroes. They should try moving her from the kiss-of-death Children’s Classics shelf, let her slug it out with the newcomers and see what happens.
Moira Young - 09/08/2012 |
Perfect dystopia; an eye-opening read.
Lauren Kate - 15/06/2012 |
I couldn’t put together a list of my favourite books without including a Dr Seuss. To be honest you could swap The Cat in the Hat for Fox in Socks, The Lorax, or any Dr Seuss, but The Cat in the Hat is the first one I reach for when only Seuss will do (I have days like that). I like the limited colour palette, but it’s the rhyming, slightly anarchic story that I love.
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
Allan Ahlberg; Janet Ahlberg I could pretty much be happy with any Janet and Allan Ahlberg book here, and in fact I’ve just spent a very pleasant hour sat on the floor reading a selection out loud to myself (it’s one of the perks of my job!) I could have chosen any Jolly Postman, and Burglar Bill came close, but in the end I chose Cops and Robbers because I couldn’t resist Grandma Swag . . . who could?
‘Hallo, hallo,’ said Officer Pugh,
‘Now then, what’s going on here?’
‘Not much, young man,’
Said the criminal gran,
‘We’re just having a robbery, dear.’
I was quite glad she got away!
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
The best example of my favourite kind of story: an extraordinary girl underestimated by a cruel world.
Lauren Kate - 15/06/2012 |
Johanna Spyri; Eva Ibbotson HEIDI: Heidi is responsible for many a late-night under-the-covers reading session when I was a child. I admired her compassion for her invalid friend, Clara and her naïve flirting with Peter, the goat herd. It’s the first book I remember where I was completely taken up by the story. I even refused to go to school one morning, claiming to be sick and demanding to be sent to Switzerland! For me, it’s stood the test of time and I still love it.
Sara Sheridan - 19/06/2012 |
A zany, brilliant, funny story.
Lauren Kate - 15/06/2012 |
John Vernon Lord; Janet Burroway This book is my all time favourite picture book. It was first published in 1972 (the year I was born) and I still own my childhood copy complete with my name written inside with multi coloured felt tips.
The Giant Jam Sandwich's rhyming text is the tale of a village invaded by wasps (can you guess how they solve the problem?). It's brilliant to read out loud with witty and intricate illustrations. As a child I used to spend hours poring over the details and loved looking for the three men who were chased from the village by wasps and turned up in subsequent pages.
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
There’s really not enough Slow Lorises in picture books. Probably because they’re so s...l...o...w, or are they? Alexis Deacon’s drawing are fresh and sketchy and full of personality, and the book is quirky and stylish.
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
This is a recent favourite of mine, and another that falls into my ‘Why oh WHY couldn’t I have thought of this’ category. It’s clever from beginning to end. The illustrations are bright and friendly, but it’s Viviane Schwarz’s use of flaps that lifts it out of the ordinary. It’s truly interactive, and I know that kids love it as much as I do because when I opened it to write this piece I found it stuffed with pieces of tissue where a three year old visitor had ‘tucked’ the cats in at the end of the book with extra blankets.
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
This book was first published when I was an illustration student and my daughter was five. I was SO excited when I saw it. It’s about Herb, who falls into his book of fairytales, a book that (sadly) he hasn’t treated with great respect! It’s full of things guaranteed to make anyone smile.
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
Hughes is one of the most powerful imagists in the language and his portraits of wildlife and landscape have a compelling, precise and unsentimental sense of what is so other in nature. This collection includes brilliantly perceptive poems on such familiar species as swift, swallow, song thrush and starling.
Jeremy Mynott - 13/03/2012 |
Kenneth Grahame; E. H. Shepard This is the first book I can remember. I was four, maybe five. By the light of my bedside lamp, my father read to me from the worn clothbound copy he’d had from childhood. This was the beginning of my lifelong love of books and story. Thanks, dad.
Moira Young - 09/08/2012 |