Alex Milway Books

Captain Sunshine follows a young girl, Bella Day, through her first days as captain of a luxurious cruise ship, with an assortment of animal characters making up the crew and passengers. As their journey begins, Bella has to find creative solutions to an increasing number of problems to make sure the cruise can continue successfully. Friendship and determination are key themes.

The text is large and well spaced and the chapters are short, making it a particularly good choice for children moving on from phonics readers and looking for comfortable, satisfying chapter books. There are illustrations on every page, with a cute style and a charming limited colour palette. There’s also a map and diagram of the ship included. Set in the same fictional world as the Hotel Flamingo series, this book will appeal to fans of those books and also of series like Adventure Mice, Claude, Rabbit and Bear and Unipiggle.

This early chapter book is part of the wonderful Hotel Flamingo series. The gorgeous colours and shimmery snowflakes on the front cover are enough to draw anyone’s attention.

The workers at the hotel are preparing for a quiet winter, the temperatures are dropping, and Mrs Turpington – the hotel’s resident tortoise – needs to hibernate. Then, it snows more than anyone could have imagined, and the hotel becomes overrun with guests. What follows is how the hotel’s community comes together to help many of its guests in so many different ways at a time when the hotel is full to the brim. First, a party (Frosty Fiesta) with some very wise words from Mrs T the tortoise (‘We are nothing without each other)  and the White-Out Games with bunnies performing record-breaking stunts. Then, the birth of a polar bear cub and an external ice hotel for some guests.

This truly is a fiesta of fun, and who could resist a stay at Hotel Flamingo, even if Madame Le Pig seems terrifying?