SPLASH OUT! And dive into a freat story
OCTOPANTS by Suzy Senior, illustrated by Claire Powell (Little Tiger £10.99)
Few things make children laugh out loud as much as jokes about pants — and this bouncy, rhyming romp against a backdrop of gorgeously illustrated underwater scenes (pictured) makes the perfect choice for your summer holiday suitcase.
Octopus is embarrassed by his lack of underwear, but no one seems to stock knickers with eight tentacle holes — not even when he surfs the net.
However, his blushes are spared by the dapper seahorse owner of a fine costume emporium who stocks bobble hats for barnacles and slipper-socks for seals . . .
HANSEL AND GRETEL by Bethan Woollvin (Two Hoots £11.99)
BeTHAN wOOllviN’s subversive humour and distinctive illustrations using a limited palette of orange, black, grey and white are used to wonderful effect in this retelling of the traditional fairy tale.
Here, willow the witch is ‘good’, while the young siblings are spoilt, greedy and badly behaved.
willow invites them into her gingerbread cottage but, when they eat her out of house and home and create havoc, even the witch’s patience has its limits — with shocking consequences. Darkly funny.
THE COOK AND THE KING by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by David Roberts (Macmillan £11.99)
THe irrepressible Julia Donaldson serves up a tasty treat in this role-reversal story of a hungry king who can’t find a chef good enough to satisfy his appetite.
The only applicant left to audition is wobbly Bob, who is scared of everything.
when told to catch a fish and grow potatoes for the king’s favourite dish, his nerves let him down and it’s his royal employer who steps up to the plate . . .
A lovely rhyming tale of selfsufficiency and confidence, illustrated with humour and brio by David Roberts.
AGE 6-8
BAD NANA: OLDER NOT WISER by Sophy Henn (HarperCollins £8.99) MOve over Gangsta Granny, there’s a new perky pensioner in town!
Jeanie has a Bad Nana with a cat named liberace and an endless supply of whoopee cushions and practical jokes.
Nana may be growing old disgracefully, but she knows how to squash bullies and enjoy being different from the crowd. This is a wonderfully entertaining comic book, drawn in vivid shades of black, pink and DayGlo green, with an endearing relationship at its heart that will build as the series progresses.
BEE BOY by Tony De Saulles (OUP £6.99)
MelviN is bullied at school, but has a hobby to console him — he keeps bees on the roof of the tower block where he lives.
when the other children find out, they nickname him ‘Bee Boy’.
But none of them could imagine that Melvin has a superpower: he can actually enter the hive to learn how the community works and what threatens its existence.
Ultimately, this knowledge will arm him against his arch enemy in the classroom.
There’s a clear environmental message in this life-affirming book, which is packed with scientific details and enlivened by De saulles’s illustrations (black and yellow, naturally).
AGE 9-12 THE LIGHT JAR by Lisa Thompson (Scholastic £6.99)
THOMpsON’s debut, The Goldfish Boy, brilliantly captured the insecurity of childhood. This is an equally touching and intelligent riteof-passage mystery story.
Nate and his mother have escaped from her abusive boyfriend and are holed up in an abandoned country cottage. when Mum disappears — supposedly on a shopping trip — Nate, who is afraid of the dark, searches for her, but instead meets Kitty, a lonely girl from the local manor house, who takes him on a treasure hunt.
Then his imaginary friend sam, who disappeared six years previously, makes a welcome reappearance, bolstering his
courage, while forcing Nate to confront the hurt he felt when his father left home.
THE 1,000-YEAR-OLD BOY by Ross Welford (HarperCollins £6.99)
ElEvEN-yEar- old alfie Monk and his mother are actually more than 1,000 years old — they cannot age like normal people because they were given magical ‘life pearls’ by alfie’s father before he was murdered, which froze them into eternal life.
alfie’s witnessed everything from the viking invasion to the life of Charles dickens, but is condemned to keep moving around, friendless, before his condition is discovered by each new generation.
When his mother dies in a fire, he must trust two young neighbours, aidan and roxy, with his secret — and find the antidote to the pearls so he can grow up, grow old . . . and die.
Imaginative, poignant and thought-provoking, Welford can wring your heart, yet make you laugh at the same time.
NON-FICTION PICK FOR KIDS WONDERS OF THE WORLD’S MUSEUMS by Molly Oldfield, illustrated by Harriet Taylor Seed and Peter Malone (Wren & Rook £14.99)
SuMMEr is a great time for visiting museums.
This beautifully illustrated collection of objects from all around the world includes the gigantically famous: the blue whale skeleton in london’s Natural History Museum; the colossal (and it is colossal) squid in Wellington, New Zealand; and the smaller, quirkier objects in cabinets of curiosities, such as the ruby red Slippers from The Wizard of oz housed in Washington dC.
Historian Molly oldfield has been a researcher on the BBC television show QI and her breadth of knowledge and dry humour shine throughout this book.