You Can’t Scare a Princess
Gillian Rogerson and Sarah McIntyre
Scholastic
Don’t be beguiled by the candyfloss pink shiny cover on this one: young Princess Spaghetti, despite her mass of blond curls and her fussy, frilly pink attire, is far from the shy retiring damsel in distress, kind of princess. Oh no: this young miss is one gutsy girl who shows no fear when her father, King Cupcake, gets himself captured by the meanest, baddest pirates in the whole wide world, led by none other than Captain Waffle.

Now Captain Waffle might boast about being the terror of the high seas, but he may well have more than met his match in our young princess. She certainly leads the whole pirate crew a merry dance as she has them tunnelling deep down underground before they discover their search has been in vain; whereupon they are reduced to wailing wrecks …

Bright and bold, she might be; but our young heroine is also fun loving and forgiving and generous, all of which attributes she calls into play in the final scenes as she serves up some playful offerings

to the pirate crew – a motely bunch whose hard exteriors aren’t quite all they’re cracked up to be.
On the subject of those pirates, Sarah McIntyre’s portrayals of same are a treat: take that super cool lady pirate; isn’t she just brilliant …

And the moles in her digging scene are delightfully dotty …

You might want to follow the antics of the palace cat and the pirates’ parrot too: the endpapers are specially devoted to that pair.
Exuberant and decidedly silly, spring instantly to mind when it comes to this one: It’s likely to appeal to all youngsters who have a sense of fun and adventure, particularly those who like a tale where things aren’t quite as one might expect.

Fairy Felicity’s Moonlight Adventure
Alison Murray
Nosy Crow
Fairy Felicity discovers a letter left at her door one summer’s night, a letter instructing her to ‘Follow the silvery snail. You’ll find a surprise at the end of the trail!’ And follow it she does as it weaves and zigzags across the foliage, around a spider’s web, between the moonlit paving stones …

through a greenhouse, past the beehives in the orchard …

across the lilypads until, at the end of the garden, she and the various minibeasts Felicity has encountered on the way, arrive at a door in the wall. It’s a door with a gap through which the snail instructs her to enter and then, there before her, is the promised surprise.

Young children – mostly girls I suspect – will delight in tracing the sparkly tactile trail as it meanders over the pages of this gentle rhyming story and having done so will want to retrace their steps to explore the details in Alison Murray’s nocturnal world.

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