The Worst Princess by Anna Kemp and Sara Ogilvie

The Worst Princess has become a firm favourite in our house in a very short space of time. Partly because it features a princess, a prince and a dragon. Good stock characters that tick all of Rosie's boxes! But also because it's funny, a good story and gorgeous artwork. It makes me wish I could draw half as well!

I love this book because it's about an anti-princess. She doesn't want to be pretty and sit around in dresses and wait for her prince to come back. She wants to be out having fun, preferably with her pal the dragon! With my darling daughter completely obsessed with the colour pink and wearing pretty dresses I'm glad there is a book to show her that being a bit of a tomboy can be a lot more fun. I'm sure she'll find that out for herself anyway but it's a refreshing read!

The rhyming text is great too, with lots of references to tea! It's really funny that the Princess is called Sue (it definitely helps the rhyme along!) and can't stand her prince who's rescued her - he is a rubbish prince, admittedly. There are quite a lot of picture books that turn the myth and legend of fairy tales around and I think this is one that really works!

Boris's Big Bogey by Paul Bright and Hannah George

I have to admit I'm writing about this one under duress! It really makes me shudder! Rosie loves it and even though I have told her to get her dad to read it she made me read it tonight. So it made me think I ought to mention it on my blog.

It's the tale of Boris the cabin boy and his adventures on the high seas with a ship full of pirates. As they look at an old treasure map they think they spy an island although in actual fact it's one of Boris's big green bogeys (eugh!). But strangely enough there is an island and as they draw near the telescope shows a cave (again a bogey - ugh!) and then a treasure chest is found (a reflection of a bogey on the side of the lamp - yuck!). And so it goes on until they are back on board ship with a proper treasure trove. But lo and behold the ship springs a leak! So they turn to Boris to plug the leak with the offspring of his nose but unfortunately he's out of fresh ones. I won't tell you how it ends!

Probably the reason Rosie loves reading this with me is because I am-dram shudder and sigh my way through it!!

All about Fairytales!

We've been going a bit fairytale crazy recently and most of Rosie's playing involves being a 'charming girl' (Cinderella app - thank you Nosy Crow!), a billy goat gruff, a scary wolf who's going to eat everyone up and a handsome prince. It's all mixed up into one big fairytale of it's own!

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Emma Chichester Clark is one of our favourite retellings. I really love the way that Emma Chichester Clark has breathed new life into this classic and I adore the house on the top of the hill in the forest that the bears live in. It's a Swiss dream!

For the younger child just starting out with stories the Ladybird Touch and Feel Fairy Tales are great. The text is very short and they have touch and feel bits for the young baby to explore. They work from when your baby is one year. They also have text which has extra bits to point out and talk about with your baby running along the bottom of each page.

We were give The Gingerbread Man by Father Christmas at Harrods and it's a great retelling with lovely artwork. The collection of Ladybird First Favourite Tales is quite extensive so you can generally find your favourite fairy tale amongst them. We intend to collect them all!

The Lift-the-flap Fairy Tales from Macmillan illustrated by Nick Sharratt and written by Stephen Tucker are funny, quirky and great for 2+ years old. The flaps add a great dimension to the stories and they're nice and tough too! The text is funny and rhymes making it great to read aloud.

We also have First Picture Fairytales from Usborne, illustrated by Jo Litchfield and written by Felicity Brooks. This contains eight different fairytales including Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk. Because it only has room to tell the story in two pages the stories are quite short. I find that Rosie likes to 'read' this by herself and I grow impatient reading a whole story in just two pages so that suits me!

So that's our little collection, we also love all the 'take-offs' of fairytales you get as well. Mini Grey springs to mind! I'm sure there are many more great retellings of fairytales for this age group out there. What are your favourites? 

I will not ever never eat a tomato by Lauren Child

The title of this always gets me in a bit of a muddle. I'm sure it's supposed to! I suspect this book is really brilliant if you have a fussy eater for a child and you're at your wits end and can't see how they'll ever eat any vegetables. So far Rosie is pretty good with food so I don't love the book for that.

What I love about this is the funny characters and the contrariness of young children that is captured perfectly by Lauren Child. Of course it's a book that's been around a little while so everyone knows who Charlie and Lola are because they now have a very successful TV series.

This particular book tells the story of Charlie having to feed Lola and what a difficult job that is because she doesn't like - in no particular order: peas, tomatoes, carrots, fish fingers, potatoes (even mash), bananas, oranges, eggs and the list goes on. Charlie decides to entice his little sister to eat by calling the food exciting and mysterious names, so mashed potatoes become 'cloud fluff from Mount Fuji' and carrots are 'orange twiglets from Jupiter'. By the end Lola is enjoying herself so much that she even starts to eat tomatoes, or what she call 'moon squirters'.

It's a great book and I have no doubt that Rosie will be renaming all her food very shortly!

The Cow That Laid an Egg by Andy Cutbill and Russell Ayto

We've been enjoying this wacky picture book a lot recently. I think it helps that Rosie's at an age to realise that cows laying eggs is a silly concept - I think she realises this! We'll see... the last egg related picture book had her dropping eggs onto the floor (thank you Mini Grey and Egg Drop!). So if she starts asking chickens to 'moo' I'll know it's all gone a bit wrong.

It's the story of Majorie the cow who is feeling a bit low. All the other cows do clever tricks and she doesn't feel like she can do anything half as clever. Cue a bit of plotting from the farmyard chickens and she suddenly discovers one morning that she's laid an egg! The other cows become very jealous and are convinced that it's not going to hatch into a cow. They're right, it hatches into a little chick... a chick that says 'MOOOO!'

A lovely story and I love the illustrations. They're full of life and humour and perfectly capture the whole story.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

This book doesn't need introducing. It's one of the best known children picture books ever and for a very good reason - it's a wonderful book! I have spent hours, days, weeks, possibly a year trying to think up a picture book as good as this. It covers days of the week, the life cycle of a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly, different foods, numbers, I probably could go on!

And then there is the classic, timeless artwork. It has a naivety yet is brilliantly sophisticated at the same time. You can clearly see the influences of Picasso and Matisse in the line, texture and colours. It probably has the most spin-offs in terms of other product (crockery, stationery etc) that any children's book has and this is mainly due to the enduring appeal of the artwork.

We've been reading this since Rosie was tiny and it still is one of our favourites - proof of why it's a classic, it endures! When we read it we spend quite a lot of time on the food page with the cake, pickle etc and choose what we think everyone we know would like to eat off the page. I have also done some butterfly painting with Rosie (when you fold a piece of paper and paint half a butterfly on it and then press the other half of the paper onto it so it's a mirror image) but I think the joy of doing that is when you can do it yourself and she's still a little young.

Gorilla by Anthony Browne

We read Gorilla while at a friend's house the other night and Rosie fell in love with it so when we saw it in our local library (please support them everyone, we need to use them to keep them, and even then that's sometimes not enough, but I digress!) we checked it out straight away.

We already have one of Anthony Browne's classic gorilla stories Willy and Hugh which is about an unlikely friendship between a lonely chimpanzee and a gorilla but the story in Gorilla is far more poignant and captured Rosie's imagination.

Hannah is a little girl who loves gorillas but she spends most of her time on her own because her father is always too busy to take her anywhere or do anything with her. For her birthday the thing she wants most in the world is a gorilla. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a small toy gorilla wrapped up on her bed she's disappointed and throws it into the corner of the room with her other toys. But then a magical thing happens. The gorilla grows and grows and takes Hannah on a wonderful adventure, to the zoo, the cinema and to a cafe. When Hannah wakes up she runs downstairs to tell her dad all about the exciting time she's had but before she can say anything he asks her if she'd like to go to the zoo. Hannah ends the story a very happy little girl!

The artwork is amazing in this book. The sense of perspective and wry touches in each drawing make it a feast for the eyes for both grown-up and child! Although most of us are probably not as guilty as Hannah's dad for not managing to spare enough time for our children it's a valuable reality check for anyone.