Faces, Faces, Faces
Jacqueline & Jeremy Sinclair
Doubleday
Underlying this wonderfully playful book is a message about treating objects respectfully. Its creators have chosen to personify all manner of objects and present the book from the viewpoint of those ‘Faces’. There are kitchen things aplenty How many faces can you find?

There are bathroom objects: and the good thing is they are always smiling unless we humans mistreat them …

Because every single item has its own special purpose …

and wants nothing other than to do its own thing (lateral thinkers like me – don’t go there!!)
And probably best of all are your very own personal things. Well maybe not quite, because out there is a big wide wonderful world full of … FACES …

Now here’s a challenge: get a copy of this super book and see how many you and your children can count. Happy face counting …

And now for something completely different:

The Princess and the Pony
Katy Beaton
Walker Books
A wicked sense of humour lies at the heart of this debut picture book. It features petite Princess Pinecone who, when the story opens, is eagerly anticipating the ‘real warrior’s horse’ she’s told everyone she wants this year. (Previous birthdays have yielded cosy sweaters.) Somehow though, even after trying their very best, this is what our young warrior receives from her parents …

Too small, too round, there’s something not quite right about its eyes, it eats all the wrong things and inevitably … farts.

The question is though, can young Pinecone train said creature into suitably bellicose material in time for the forthcoming ‘great battle’.

Just doing his best is all our heroine asks of her pony when the battle day arrives and she must face Otto the Awful, meanest warrior of all. What ensues however, is truly surprising, leaving Princess Pinecone ‘flabbergasted, flummoxed, floored!’; the rest of the large cast of characters warmly cuddlesome,

and the pony with the last word or rather, err …
I suspect this one will become a much-requested book in early years settings and infant classrooms: certainly children will love the comic style art work and the determined little warrior princess; but it’s most likely to be the pony that steals the show.

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