We can’t get enough of Pumpkin Soup ever since we saw a group of KS1 teachers turn this book into a successful cross-curricular topic. Cat, Duck and Squirrel are friends who live in an old white cabin, making pumpkin soup together every day. One day, the strength of their relationship is put to the test when duck decides to switch roles and what follows is a compassionate adventure about friendship and belonging. We adore the warm, vibrant colours of the illustrations, the rich language and captivating storytelling in this autumn-time classic.

Find Your Happy is a bright, welcoming book that is bound to get children talking about emotions. Despite being called ‘find your happy’, the book recognises that it is sometimes hard to feel happy all of the time and that every day can be different. It gives honest advice and easy ways to cheer yourself up that do not involve the more common methods that can sometimes be suggested (for example playing on electronics and playing games).

A variety of emotions are mentioned in this book, including anger, worry and shyness. Each emotion comes with small tips and tricks that any individual child could easily use in real life to help make themselves feel better and to also help them to embrace the emotion. In particular, the page about feeling sad and the encouragement given to talk to someone trusted is a particularly important one that could strike up many conversations and support children’s emotional literacy.

The wording and designs of each page are colourful, engaging and fun, making the book easy to follow. The motif of a sloth animal running throughout each page is also a nice addition, adding subtle humour and sure to be a hit with children. It will no doubt leave readers with a heart-warming feeling inside and lots of great advice that they can use when understanding and dealing with different emotions.

This is a tremendously popular story that has now been developed into a series of three books. It tells the funny tale of Supertato, the unlikely superhero who is on a mission to protect the other vegetables from the Evil Pea. A laugh-out-loud story that children want to hear again and again.

Following on from Never Show a T-Rex a Book and Never Teach a Stegosaurus to Do Sums, this latest what-if dinosaur adventure has captured the imaginations of little ones afresh.
The story invites the reader to suppose what could happen if a big fun-loving dinosaur let her artistic side go wild. From crayons and paint to full colour explosions – anything could happen! Young children love the larger-than-life character and can relate to the sheer joyfulness of getting vibrant and messy with art projects. Adults who have ever set foot in an EYFS classroom while the paints are out will find plenty of familiar scenes to smile about too.
Amid the host of dino-themed books available, we especially enjoyed this series. It is refreshing to have a female dinosaur as a lead character, doing something other than marauding after prey!
A super-fun ode to boundless creativity.

This colourful picturebook tells us from Jake’s perspective about his creative, recycling, wheelchair-using Mum, who sees the potential in everything whether from a skip or an antique shop. She upcycles her finds to make new things for their home and garden as well as to beautify their community. Sometimes, his Mum’s constant remaking of things causes Jake to worry, but he is soon reassured by his Mum who will always love him however he changes.

We love the environmental message of this book, showing that so much that is discarded can be used again. This would be an excellent book to encourage thinking about recycling and reusing, or to spark ideas for upcycling projects for students to create themselves. The story also features positive representations of wheelcahir users, whose inclusion in the book is not solely or primarily focused on their disability or wheelchair use.

Jake’s concerns about change wil surely resonate with many children as they grow and change throughout their school years, and this book provides a reassuring message about how change and growth are okay and to be embraced. A large, hardback picturebook, with wonderfully colourful illustrations and large writing, this is ideal as a read-to-the-class book or for younger children to enjoy looking at independently.

Martha loves making maps and readers will love exploring them!

Starting in space, zooming down to street level and then inside a home, Martha Maps it Out is a great introduction to finding your way around. In standard picture book story format, it’s also fact-filled and informative. The book certainly suits curious minds who will enjoy exploring the detail to find facts on each double page. We particularly liked the clear labelling and use of colour throughout. The presentation is fun with an illustration style reminiscent of Lauren Child’s collages. There are even interactive mazes in the end-papers!

This book would be a great addition to any school library or reading corner and is ideal for children to explore alone, or in small groups as a discussion starter. It could be used to support KS1 topics in geography and maths, such as local area mapping, towns and cities, geographical scale and as a general introduction to map work. A really fun book for young readers.

Fabulous Frankie is a beautifully told and fabulously illustrated story of acceptance and valuing kindness. All Frankie the flamingo wants is to be fabulous! But he’s literally surrounded by so many fabulous flamingos, so how on earth can he stand out from the crowd? He looks to all the latest fashion accessories to achieve his goal of being truly fabulous, but in the end it is Frankie’s friends who will help him learn that the things that really do make him fabulous are on the inside. This flamboyant tale of kindness and learning to be yourself is filled with stylish illustrations and celebrates the joy of learning to value what’s on the inside.

A superhero story with a difference…. and lots of cheesy puns! When Supermouse holds auditions in Mouseopolis for The League of Remarkable Rodents, he isn’t sure he has found the best animals for the job. That is until Mount Fondue explodes and cheese covers the town. With Supermouse facing a cheesy end, the League of Remarkable Rodents zoom to the rescue. Will they save their hero or is he truly “fondoomed”?

This book is full of cheesy puns which are laugh-out-loud funny and make this book an enjoyable read for adults and children. Each page features flaps to lift and holes to see more of the story making it an interactive experience. The story is told through speech bubbles and text and is enhanced by great, brightly-coloured illustrations. With just the right amount of peril for our hero and some daring deeds, this has become a firm favourite already.

The Body Book aims to help children aged 4-7 to explore some of the incredible things that our bodies do. This is an engaging non-fiction board book containing see-through acetate pages, allowing an x-ray peek into the human anatomy. Each page covers a different function of the human body, from breathing air and pumping blood to moving around and – yes – making waste. With labelled acetate diagrams of the muscular, skeletal, respiratory, circulatory, digestive, excretory and nervous systems, this is a superb first look at human anatomy for young children. The smallest readers will enjoy running their fingers along the acetate diagrams, tracing blood vessels or touching the familiar outlines of the skeleton. Older KS1 children will find plenty of food for thought among the pockets of interesting information that outline the processes of each of the body’s major systems…