By Nicci, The Kids Books Curator
My top picks selected from both new and recently published children's illustrated picture books (for ages 2+ & 3+)!!
How many of these have you read and enjoyed too?
Any you hadn't come across before?
'Frank and Bert: The One With the Missing Biscuits'
by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros
(Nosy Crow)
For ages 2+
[Ad - review copy]
🌱It’s picture book story number 3 for Frank the fox and Bert the bear, very best of friends. Waiting for the next in the series has become a habit, and they are an absolute bestseller too! Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, must be absolutely thrilled as he sits sipping a cuppa from his studio in France. I can’t imagine the sense of achievement that a creator (and in this case who is both author and illustrator) must feel that their book gets turned into a series and becomes an annual event in the Children’s book world!! Such joy!! Congratulations to Chris!! We definitely need some plushies at this point.
Last year Frank and Bert had an adventure on their bicycles and this year, just in time for the warmer weather, this lovable duo are off on a picnic. How are your little ones with picnics? Mine aren’t great, I have to admit!! I love a picnic, myself, especially in the countryside - beaches, not so much, due to the likelihood of a sandy sandwich Haha! Like Frank and Bert, who tell us of their past experiences of picnicking, there’s a good chance in this current climate of a sudden rain shower (not great if there’s no trees to shelter under) or heaven’s forbid in the height of summer, the wasps are on the hunt!! I can just see myself reading this to children and they’ll be nodding away, remembering a time that a wasp landed on their food and gave them a fright!! Nevertheless, Frank and Bert are not put off, and they head out together, backpacks full of goodies.
Bert has brought a surprise box, a big yellow box that looks so inviting. It’s something for the picnic, and Frank can’t wait to find out what’s inside! So when Bert falls asleep against a tree after his food, Frank’s curiosity gets the better of him and something really awful happens… he eats the entire surprise contents… then even more awfully he makes up a story about lots of scary squirrels! Does he come clean? Of course he does. Bert is his kind best friend. The story is classically teaching kindness and that honesty is the best policy. BUT, the story doesn’t end there… Frank and Bert’s next picnic is even more eventful!
Fantastic series for character familiarity, and, finding humour in some life’s gentle ups and downs that encompass first experiences for young children. Great read aloud for suspense and a what do you think happened next. The illustrations are expressive and in no way overwhelming, the text of a good size giving the pages a calming sense of space. I’ve always got time for Frank and Bert.
🌱Previous titles in the series Frank and Bert (Book 1)
'I Love Books'
by Mariajo Ilustrajo
(Frances Lincoln Books)
For ages 3+
🌱Me = massive Mariajo Ilustrajo fan… I have Flooded (winner of the Klauss Flugge Prize), then Lost (love too), and now ‘I Love Books’ is finally in my hands having waited for it as soon as I knew it was coming last year. YAY!! I knew it was going to be a winner, but of course anyone who coaches children in reading for enjoyment is going to literally jump on this, fight for the last copy of it in a bookshop!! And you know what, the UK is pretty much all out of copies of it - it’s a runaway bestseller. Published in time for all the World Book Day frenzy, I’m hardly surprised.
However, you haven’t seen me raving about it in detail until now. Why? Because away from the ‘dressing up’ adrenaline, I wanted to introduce this to my schools once everyone stopped hyperventilating worrying about WBD tokens, author visits and so on. And so we had a breathe moment this week, loving, laughing and gasping in wonder as we read ‘I Love Books’ together and explored every hidden clue, all the pauses for the drama (for it is very much like a performance piece with gusto if you do a read aloud) and magi
What I won’t do is tell you what you’re going to discover along the way, the journey this little girl goes on, what the magic formula is for turning this hater of books into a child who thirsts for literary adventures, imaginary quests and time alone with her latest find in the public library. What I will tell you is that this little girl is a girl you probably know or have seen around, in school, on the bus, in the back seat of a car, at home, or walking down the street - the one with headphones on usually, looking at her phone, iPad or Switch. If you know someone like this, and you love reading, and you know the power of literature, then ‘I Love Books’ is going to be fascinating to them. If you know a child who absolutely loves reading already, then this book is going to show them what life feels like for children who haven’t found that one book yet that will propel their imagination into a world of stories to escape to and find yourself in, the one book that flicks a switch in their brain.
My book club children aren’t all book fanatics, some are a work in progress. We had an absolute whale of a time reading ‘I Love Books’ together. It’s an amazing read aloud, full of moments of engagement and discussion without feeling like you’re going to lose the momentum of the story if you pause. The children loved looking at the pictures, they loved the dialogue moments, which were so relatable in their content. The switch up in illustration palette between the real world and the imaginary world, where the colours and creatures were almost bursting out of the pages, was a super surprise reveal moment and I loved the gasps, oooo’s, and ahhhh’s. Hurrah especially for the surprises within the end papers - front vs back. Genius!! We probably spent an equal amount of time on the end papers as reading the book. Haha!! It’s one of those stories that you’ll keep thinking back to, and when you look at it again, you’ll notice more fun clues and fun little literary references - some the children managed to get by themselves and loved shouting out in glee! Clever! Brilliant! Of the moment! Much needed!
I loved the illustrated story path in the book, and so I took along my copy of ‘Story Path’ by Kate Baker and Madalena Matoso (Templar, 2016) and created an imagination exercise that produced some absolutely AMAZING results… I was SO PROUD of the children, they really embraced the activity and I could tell that the story was so inspirational and encouraging for a couple of them in particular.
🌱Download my FREE TKBC book-based activity sheet:
🌱Previous titles
Flooded (Quarto, 2022) Winner of the Klauss Flugge Prize for Illustration
Lost (Quarto, 2023)
'Luna Loves Gardening'
by Joseph Coelho illustrated by Fiona Lumbers
(Andersen Press)
For ages 3+
🌱Luna is ready for Spring!! This little girl is off to the community garden with her daddy, the beginning of a new learning journey for Luna filled with tales from around the world. This is BOOK 5 (or book 6 if you count ‘Luna Loves World Book Day’ and book 7 with the baby board book ‘Luna Loves Books’) in one of the most brilliant, fly off the bookshop shelves series the world of Children’s picture books has known where the protagonist is from a blended family, a loving family who build happy memories with Luna through wonderful experiences in each new story whether its an art gallery, carnival or the library.
You might remember when I reviewed ‘Luna Loves Christmas’ in December 2023, a book that I used in one of my Primary school book clubs - a beautiful story, but so powerful for those children who are often unseen and represented in a relatable and hopeful way in picture books - children whose parents have separated or divorced.
It’s no mystery as to how the illustrations or the words in the ‘Luna Loves…’ series are so top notch! The author is none other than our UK Children’s Laureate (and all round wonderful human), Joseph Coelho, and the illustrator is Fiona Lumbers (also an all round wonderful human), whose artwork is infused with her incredible skills as an artist and her own love of being a mum.
Although Luna’s mum does feature in this story a little, this is a Luna and Daddy story this time, and Luna’s grandparents. Just like communities are filled with people who have heritage from around the world, so to do the plants in the soil, the birds in the sky and the dragonflies on the pond, and Luna has many a ‘Woah!’ moment when she finds out that potatoes came from the Incas in South America, that Nana’s callaloo seeds descended from the ones Luna’s great grandmother grew in Jamaica, Mr Kushnir’s beetroot seeds came from Ukraine and more… Children representing multiple cultures, and heritages are together with Luna at the garden, helping out their adults and joining in the fun and storytelling.
Waiting for the plants to grow isn’t so much fun though… and once the seasons pass the community garden is bursting with colour, smells and life, and it’s harvest time!! Strawberry popcorn anyone??
The stunning book cover is beautifully produced, very tactile with embossed title and artwork - I especially love the greens, oranges, yellows together, basically I love Fiona’s signature style! Inside the front and back covers you’ll find instructions on how to create a bug hotel, create a pot for a plant from something used, create a mini pond by up-cycling a container, and how to keep a wildlife journal. What more can I say, but, here’s another fantastic Luna adventure for us to love and share with our young people - check!
🌱Previous titles in this series
Luna Loves Library Day (Andersen Press, 2018)
Luna Loves Art (Andersen Press, 2021)
Luna Loves Dance (Andersen Press, 2022)
Luna Loves Books (Andersen Press, 2023 - Baby Board Book)
'All The Wonderful Ways to Read'
by Laura Baker illustrated by Sandra de la Prada
(Little Tiger Press)
For ages 3+
[Ad - review copy]
🌱You might already have this in hardback, which published in time for World Book Day in 2023… bizarrely though the paperback is publishing the week after World Book Day in 2024, a real shame. Anyhoooo…. I'm super absolutely, majorly grateful that the publisher sent me a copy in time to share this with the whole school on WBD!!
A rhyming ode to all things reading for young children, this colourful and visually engaging picture book is both a celebration of the versatility of reading for pleasure, and at the same time an exposure of all the brilliant reasons why one should read. Asking where you love to read, when and how, through a mixture of animal and human characters, readers will be able to enjoy working out which one they might be, exploring different types of books too - do you like poems, comics, fact books, or like the bespectacled hippo on the loo you might be such an avid reader you can't even resist reading the ingredients on the soap dispenser (me)!! Children can ponder whether they like funny, frightening, or heart-filled feel good books. Is reading an escape into a fantasy world of imagination, perhaps from adults arguing at home? There is sensitivity to children who might have more of a natural propensity towards drawing than writing. However you like to read, the message is that it is a global mode of connectivity from one human to another. Whether the child hasn't yet found their groove with reading yet, or whether they are a little bookworm (and the publisher's future adult consumer)…
"Books take us on journeys that we can all share,
And give us the power to go anywhere!
So no matter just how, or what book,
or your speed, what I wish for NOW…
Is that YOU love to read!"
You could have heard a pin drop once I’d read the above last page out to all the children from Year R - Year 6 and the staff in the assembly last week.
Please like this post and leave me a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts too!
N.B. The tags below don't apply in entirety to each of the above books. The tags are grouped all together at the end of the post to enable readers to find relevant posts within the whole website, a bit like a search function.
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