The Bog Baby

A simply beautiful book, coupled with equally beautiful illustrations. Two small sisters go to the magic pond in Bluebell Wood to go fishing. But they find something much better than a frog or a newt. They find a bog baby - small and blue with wings like a dragon. The girls decide to take him home and make him their secret. But one day the Bog Baby becomes ill...


I think the reason children and adults love this book is because children would love to find their own Bog Baby - and adults remember when they also would have loved to do so. Jeanne Willis's words are simple and effective (and affective) - and Gwen Millward's illustrations are quirky and evocative.


Thoroughly recommended.


Amazon link: The Bog Baby

Emily Brown and the Thing

This is the second book in the Emily Brown series (the first being "That Rabbit belongs to Emily Brown" and the third being "Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency") - and arguably the best. Cressida Cowell's fantastic words conjure up a little girl who has to take on a semi grown-up role as she tries to comfort a sad Thing which she finds sitting on her windowsill - and to get him to go to sleep.

At first he tells her he's lost his cuddly and can't get to sleep without it. Eventually Emily Brown (and Stanley, her toy rabbit) find it at the top of the twistiest, thorniest tree in the Dark and Scary Wood. She presumes the Thing will go to sleep now, but no, then he needs his bedtime milk - which she and Stanley retrieve in the Wild and Whirling Wastes. And then his medicine, and then...

These worlds (as well as Emily Brown's home) are brought to us in an imaginative scratchy collage style by illustrator Neal Layton, who makes us feel genuinely sorry for the scribbly, large-eyed Thing in his checked pyjamas. Add to this a simple, satisfying twist at the end and you have a pretty perfect picture book.

Amazon.co.uk link: Emily Brown and the Thing

Time to get this blog rolling...

I've been reading picture books to my son for five years now and in some ways I'm quite sad that he'll soon be too old for them. So I've decided to create this blog to showcase some fun, quirky, modern picture books - often ones that haven't received that much attention elsewhere. (In fact, some of the best picture books won't feature here, simply because most people know them already - The Gruffalo, other Donaldson/Scheffler books, Charlie and Lola, etc.)

All the books have been exhaustively tested on my own son - and on me. You know when you’re happy reading out a particular picture book for the umpteenth time? That’s the kind of book that will feature in this blog. And who knows, when my son graduates to black and white fiction, maybe the blog will move on to those books too...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...