Enchanted Beach

While most children know what the seaside is like in the height of summer, this gorgeous picture book explores what fun can be had at the coast all year round.

Written by novelist Esther Freud (great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud), the book reads like a nostalgic series of snapshots, capturing moments of family life by the coast across all weathers and occasions, including icy waves, autumn winds and New Year’s Eve celebrations.

The text rolls along with a loose, gentle rhyme that mirrors the ebb and flow of the tide. It pairs the simple pleasures of a day on the beach – like crabbing (unsurprising given the author’s links to the crabbing-famed village of Walberswick in Suffolk), queuing up for ice cream and watching waves crash – with rich vocabulary, unpatronisingly introducing young readers to words like phosphorescence.

Emma Chinnery’s watercolour illustrations bring a timeless feel to the pages, capturing the spray of the ocean, the shifting hues of the sky and that dreamlike feeling of losing track of time while playing by the beach.

A beautiful, evocative title that makes a wonderful addition to early years and KS1 bookshelves and will add depth to schools’ book collections on coastal and seaside topics.