These are three brand new board books from Little Tiger – thanks to the publisher for sending them for review.

Don’t Mix Up My Farm
Rosamund Lloyd and Spencer Wilson

Five farm animals – a sheep, a donkey, a cockerel, a pig and a duck offer tactile fun in this matching game of a book. Little ones will enjoy creating strange-looking creatures by mismatching one of their features using the wheel. Although none of the creatures will be impressed to be given wrong horn, beak, tail or comb, so they should make sure they also match each with the small pictures on the back cover; otherwise a lot of braying, bleating, crowing, grunting and quacking might break out down on the farm.

What’s Scarier than a Spider?
Amelia Best and Becky Davies

The scorpion, wasp, cockroach, mosquito, and spider more than meet their match in this altogether different peekaboo game. The aforementioned creatures are anticipating in turn, dinner, a fight, a tasty treat, being the boss

and upsetting something or someone. However as the fly on each spread delights in announcing, each one has an unexpected confrontation of the alarming kind.
There’s some delicious alliteration – ‘massive mantis’ and ‘biting beetle’ for little ones to try getting their tongues around, along with the delightfully shocking creepy crawly surprises revealed by lifting the flaps, especially the final extra large one to revel in. Amelia Best has portrayed some terrifying minibeasts in her arresting illustrations.

I’m Not Scared, You Are!
Patricia Hegarty and Thomas Elliott

With a plethora of scary sounds waiting to spook your little ones at the press of a button, we join two child characters on a foray out into the night. Their journey takes them deep into a forest wherein bats and owls are ready to alarm with their flaps and yowls. They board a passing ghost train that drops them off outside a cottage wherein a witch is busy stirring something that’s bubbling in her enormous cauldron. Hearts thumping, on they go over the bridge, under which lurk not one but three growling, grunting trolls, as they head towards a huge haunted house. Inside they are met by rattling skeletal sounds, followed by clangs and clanks sending them hurtling towards the door once more. After a frantic dash our adventurers arrive back home safely and of course, they confirm “No, we’re not afraid!’ But are they? …
Patricia Hegarty’s rhyming text reads aloud really well offering lots of opportunities for action as well as noise making and Elliott’s scenes are jocular rather than of the shivers-down-the-spine- sending scary.