by Gabrielle Vincent (Catnip £10.99)
Furnished with old-fashioned prams, grandfather clocks and wooden dressers, Vincent’s illustrations possess Edwardian grace, without seeming stale or derivative. Celestine is a tiny mouse with exquisite pink ears and a petticoat to match, who goes out walking in the snow with Ernest and drops her beloved toy penguin. The lost object – a familiar subject for picture books – is something with which every child and parent will identify, although Ernest’s loving intervention is unusual and would only be an option for those super-handy with needle and thread. (3+)
Photograph: Catnip
by Lane Smith (Macmillan £11.99)
There is, in children’s picture books, a grandma – or grandpa – subgenre in which grandparents are invariably heros. Grandpa Green is no exception but the book is so intriguingly illustrated, you can pardon its bias. It features talking topiary (Grandpa is a gardener) and leads us up the garden path of grandpa’s life – even incorporating the second world war (topiary plane included). It's the right side of sentimental, with enough style and unexpected edge – not to mention hedge – to mark it out from the crowd. (3+)
Photograph: Macmillan
by Jeanie Willis and Tony Ross (Andersen Press £10.99)
This duo is a safe pair of hands – but there is nothing safe about their howling, toothy hypochondriac of a hippo with a ‘spotamus’ on her ‘botamus.’ The problem is scarlet and unmissable. Mixed views about what ails her are aired and some dubious treatments comically illustrated. A cure is not found. ‘But Potamus got hotamus/Grumpimus and grotamus/And still she had the spotamus.’ The rhyming has vim and is great to read aloud right up to its, in every way, sticky end: a bubble-gum full stop. (3+)
Photograph: Andersen Press
by Axel Scheffler (Nosy Crow £7.99)
Scheffler’s illustration is colourfully upbeat; there is a feelgood factor to his rabbits in their cosy knitted scarves. They go out onto a snowy hill (it looks like London’s Primrose Hill) and pretty soon they're in toboggan heaven. They have a scuffle about a snowman (or, to be accurate, snowmouse) and start – most convincingly – to push and tumble, get cold and weepy. But this is a simple, uncontroversial, reassuring story. It will be warm inside at the end of the day. (2+)
Photograph: Nosy Crow
by Nick Sharratt (Alison Green books £10.99)
This book might seem formulaic at first, but Sharratt has come up with a splendid stratagem to involve children at Christmas. Different animals, all with perky expressions and got up in his trademark bright colours, appear in different disguises: an owl as a Christmas tree, a dog as an elf, a cat aiming high as an angel ... Little readers will jubilantly unmask the lot. This is sartorial hide-and-seek, a yuletide Who’s Who. (2+)
Photograph: Alison Green Books
by Stephanie Blake (Gecko Press £10.99)
Aiming high this is not – but the cover, featuring an exclamatory buck-toothed white rabbit with patches of rouge on his cheeks, is likely to stop even non-bookish children in their tracks. He is a bunny of few words. Actually, he can only say one thing (no prizes for guessing). The solution to the problem comes in startling wolfish form. A story guaranteed to entertain young children with its naughty exclamations and convince parents with its realism: the solution to the bunny’s bad-mouthing proves only temporary. (3+)
Photograph: Gecko Press
by Michelle Markel, illustrated by Amanda Hall (Eerdmans £11.99)
Rousseau’s spirit has inspired Amanda Hall: this book is a captivating homage to a lavish, playful, painterly world. We see Henri, eyes shut, on a Parisian park bench, apparently inhaling the scent of outsize marigolds. Meanwhile, Markel tell his story, and lets us know how art eventually won out against establishment ridicule. She explains: ‘Sometimes Henri is so startled by what he paints that he has to open the window to let in some air.’ We have no need to do likewise – this book is the freshest of breezes. (5+) Photograph: Eerdmans
by Peter Harris and Deborah Allwright with Corina Fletcher (Egmont £12.99)
It is in the nature of pirates to pop up, and that is what they do here, with panache, in this craftily constructed book. Incidentally, these are not your regular piratical blokes; they're ‘rough, tough little girl pirates with their own pirate ship’. But they have the look just right: regulation eye patches abound. Tropical islands, a pop-up hammock and hidden treasure all feature, along with Captain Patch shouting his worst: ‘If you don’t give me my treasure back, I’ll tell my Mum’. Read on, m’hearties. (3+)
Photograph: Egmont
by Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb (Macmillan £10.99)
This wonderful book is impressive firstly because of its understanding of how children play. The delicate gang of paper dolls – all holding hands – flee from assorted imaginary predators until the devastating day arrives when a real boy, with a real pair of scissors, arrives. It's a shocking moment, beautifully drawn by Rebecca Cobb: the dolls, in pieces, resemble flakes of snow. But all is not lost: Donaldson lightly proposes imagination and memory as rescuing forces. The paper dolls will hold hands forever. (3+)
Photograph: Macmillan
by Clare and Michael Morpurgo, designed and illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill (Templar £17.99)
This is an engaging new departure for Michael Morpurgo, the first book he has written with his wife Clare. It was inspired by their country childhoods and part of the proceeds from every copy will support the marvellous charity they started 30 years ago, ‘Farms for City Children’. The book is set out as an inviting scrapbook with handwritten pages, intricate illustration and pasted-in pastoral poems ranging from John Masefield to Ted Hughes to Anon. It's lovely – the next best thing to an uplifting country walk. (5+)
Photograph: Templar
