You Can't Eat A Princess by Gillian Rogerson & Sarah McIntyre

This picture book ticks many boxes for us. Princess - yes (groan but actually I approve of Princess Spaghetti, she's ballsy and likes chocolate, it's all good). Aliens - yes (when we look at the night sky and we pick out what we can see Rosie also always mentions aliens, hmmm!). Chocolate - yes (we both love chocolate, who doesn't?). So I guess we were always going to love it. I also enjoy reading Sarah McIntyre's tweets and blog posts - partly because she's based in our old stomping ground around Greenwich.

It's Princess Spaghetti's birthday but her father, King Cupcake is missing. It turns out he's been kidnapped by aliens who are rather partial to a juicy human. It's down to the princess to rescue him in the Royal Rocket. Once she's located him she tries to persuade the aliens of the joy of chocolate instead of eating humans by inviting them to her birthday party.

This story was so successful the first time we read it that the next day we did a complete re-enactment of it before breakfast. For some reason I had to be nearly every character while Rosie directed me, but that's another blog post.

I love the text, I think it's imaginative and reads really well. And the illustrations are fab, except for the fact that they make me a bit hungry!

A Child's Garden by Michael Foreman

This book is such a beautiful and hopeful story that even though it's a bit old for Rosie we have read it a lot.

Set in a war torn setting it tells the story of a little boy who sees a plant growing amongst the rubble and starts to water it. As the vine grows it provides shade and a place for children to play but then soldiers on the other side of the fence see it and demolish it. The winter comes and goes and with spring comes more new life, on the other side of the fence this time. A little girl tends her garden and the boy watches until suddenly he spies life his side of the fence and is able to nurture his garden once more. One day he hopes to be able to walk into the hills once more with all the other children and have peace. It's a lovely tale of hope and promise of a better future with children.

Although this is a bit old for a three year old and the concept of war and what the children are living in is beyond her comprehension (thank goodness). I think that it's important to try and establish how fortunate we are to live in our safe streets and lovely houses and be able to enjoy nature without even thinking about it.

Fancy Dress Farmyard by Nick Sharratt

'There's a party at the farmyard'! This is a fun vibrant picture book - it's actually a little young for my three and half year old but she still loves it. What's great is that it's suitable to read to both my children even with a three year age gap. It has rhyming text (tick for pre-speakers), bold contrasting colours (great for developing those eyes) and lots of interactivity (ideal for the 3 year old). Now to be perfectly honest the six month old doesn't do much more than sit on my knee and try to grab the book to shove in her mouth but I know that she is learning (deep down!) about what you do with a book and the great fun you can have with it.

The rhymes are short and not always that wonderful! But my three year old loves to finish them off for me or even recite them in total (sigh - yes it's one of those, we've read it every night for the last month. It's going to be time to hide it soon!). She also loves to shout out who is hiding beneath the fancy dress costume and when we lift the flap to reveal we make the animal noise, for the benefit of the 6 month old.

At the end of the book you lift the flaps of the barn and all the animals in their fancy dress are revealed. We then always have a heated discussion which goes like this:

'Mummy, which would you like to be?' 

'I'd like to be the pirate.'

'No, Mummy, you can be the princess or the fairy.'

'But I want to be the pirate.'

'Girls can't be pirates.' (shouting!)

'Girls can be anything they want to be.'

'No, you have to be the fairy.'

'Ok, but girls really can be anything they want.'

(frowning!)

'And boys can too, ok?'

'No, mummy. I'm the princess and you're the fairy.' (pause) 'Daddy can be the pirate.' 

(groan)

I think I've even been guilty of saying 'girl power' in one of these discussions before. I just cannot believe that my daughter can be so gender specific! It will get better won't it? I won't be having this argument when she's twelve (to pick an age randomly!). One of the first times we had this discussion she got so upset she started to cry about it. I don't think I ever envisaged having a daughter sobbing her heart out about not being a princess when I first had kids.

For all the crazy politics that go with this book it's definitely one of our current favourites and as I mentioned it is great to read with different aged children. 

One Little Baby by Richard Dungworth and Jane Massey

I was sent this book for Rosie to share with her baby sister and we liked it so much I thought I'd do a blog post on it.

It's a simple picture book of a day in the life of a baby from waking up and getting dressed to going to the park, having tea and going to bed. There are the obligatory moments that every parent will recognise, the falling over with a bump and needing a cuddle, the tea on the head (spaghetti trailing down baby's face anyone?!), although this baby seems to go to sleep straight away. I'm going to read it straight away again to mine and see if they'll take the hint. All in all it's very very cute!

I love the delicate illustrations and how they stand out so beautifully on the page. The line work is fantastic and the restrained use of colour means it makes a lot more of an impact. The text is gently rhyming, almost how you would talk to your baby throughout the day (if you were a super-parent!) and compliments the illustrations beautifully.

It's a really nice first picture book to share with a baby or as we did with a toddler and a new baby.

Rosie's Magic Horse by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake

I picked this book up partly because it's a Quentin Blake and - well you know, he's amazing! And I also picked it up because it had Rosie in the title. When I read it I was struck by the story and how imaginative it is. Since my Rosie has turned three her imagination has leapt ahead and I am consistently surprised and delighted by her crazy, wonderful games which she acts out with all kinds of weird and wonderful props and with a constant stream of consciousness burbling from her mouth!

It's a story that takes a lollipop stick that has been abandoned and turns it into a magic horse which a little girl uses to find treasure and rescue her family's fortunes. It's wonderfully told, the text is poetic and beautiful. The illustrations, as you'd expect, are spectacular and really work so well with the text.

This is a book that we will keep reading for many years and I hope that amongst the reams of toys that Rosie seems to have accumulated it will maybe remind her that you don't need much to find a story. A simple lolly stick will do!

First Picture Cookbook

We got this First Picture Cookbook out of the library recently and have been using it so much I think I'll buy it. It has a really good mix of recipes and being a board book stands up well so you can follow it as you go. We do cook together quite a lot so I did find it quite easy to do the recipes with Rosie. She really loves having a recipe book that is hers and likes to suggest things to make from it.

We tried the biscuits - see picture below! It's a good recipe and worked well. As usual the part Rosie enjoyed the most was eating the uncooked dough. We had some ready rolled icing left over from her birthday so we cut shapes from it and decorated the biscuits with it. I really like the fact that it's for 8 biscuits. That's a perfect amount for a child's recipe and you can always increase it if you want more.

Rosie is desperate to make the fudge recipe. It has icing sugar, marshmallows and butter. I've never seen a fudge recipe like it but I guess it's to avoid the dangerous boiling of sugar that you'd normally do. If it works it might be genius (and everyone's Christmas presents!).

It also includes recipes for chocolate crispies, cheesy shapes, flapjacks, bread rolls and cupcakes - although you could do what we did at a recent birthday party and make the cakes and then just get the kids to decorate them with millions of toppings. It seemed to go down well!

I think this has a great mix of recipes and we'll probably get round to making most of them. Although I would like to try the Annabel Karmel First Cookbook to compare, I suspect it has more things like jacket potato toppings and pizza in it and is for a slightly older age group. I like the way this book has only a few recipes and they are mainly baking ones.

Funnybones by Janet and Allan Ahlberg / Snapdragon at Norwich Castle

Funnybones was used as a basis for an activity session that we went to at Norwich Castle last week. We've read it on and off over the last year but I think that Rosie will probably be requesting it more since our day out! The book itself has a lovely rhythmic quality and gathers speed as you read the first page 'In the dark, dark street, there was a dark, dark house.' The story follows the adventures of a big, little and dog skeleton who go out to have fun in the middle of the night and want to find someone to scare. The dog skeleton ends up falling apart and they try to put him back together. Then they go to the zoo and although all the normal animals are asleep the skeleton ones are awake, so they have some fun together!

It's a simple great story that has been around for years and is always a favourite of libraries at Halloween. Our local one was doing quite a lot of drawing competitions based around it. You can understand it being used in so many different ways since it really lends itself to extra activities. Funnybones is part of a series and there are quite a few more including Mystery Tour, and The Ghost Train.

The activity session at the castle was called Snapdragon and for 2-4 year olds. It's run once a month on a friday. The next one is on December 14th. It's £2.50 for an hour and really well organised. We started off looking at different bones and all the kids had to guess what animals they came from (tiger skull, woolly mammoth calf bone etc) and then we were given binoculars (made out of loo roll inners!) and told to go and find the animals in the museum. After that we read Funnybones and then did activities that were bone related, including rubbing fossils through to paper. It was great! I really recommend it if you live anywhere near Norwich.