A bear, a bee, and a honey tree
Daniel Bernstrom and Brandon James Scott
Hippo Park

The book begins with the three natural objects named in the title each shown in an illustration of their own. The bee – a busy one of the honey obsessed kind – then flies out from the tree to visit a flower. The bear – a hungry one – sallies forth intent on obtaining some honey from that tree. On the bee’s return we see two busy creatures in the tree looking far from happy. The drama escalates as the honey hunting ursine faces a swarm of ‘fuzzy buzzing bees’, then cascades down to the ground coming to land in a weedy patch above which one angry bee searches and the bear hides before both the million buzzing bees, still busy, return to their tree and a very disgruntled, exceedingly hungry bear returns to it’s cave.

With its cleverly constructed text using minimal words by Daniel Bernstrom and dramatic story telling scenes by Brandon James Scott, this playful board book will entertain both little humans and grown-up sharers.

Dinosaurs: A Pop-Up Book
Ingela P Arrhenius
Walker Books

There are five double spreads allocated to dinosaurs in this large format novelty board book, each one introduced by popular illustrator, Ingela Arrhenius. First we meet the Long Necks, all nine featured are herbivores, each with a long tail, very long neck and small head.
Next come the Spiky Dinos – ten in all, and every one had bony plates along its back and spikes on its tail. (A Sauropelta (new to me) had spikes all over its body however.) Lifting the flap beside the Kentrosaurus (also new to me) is a sentence about its brain – despite the creature’s huge size, its brain was only the size of a walnut.
The third spread has nine dinos, all with bird-like beaks. Most also sported frills on their necks and some had horns. The least frilly of the Frilly Heads, Psittacosaurus got its name on account of having a parrot-like beak: Psittacosaurus means ‘parrot lizard’.

Fourth come the Feathered Friends, dinosaurs that walked on two legs and were often feathered and winged. The smallest known dinosaur is featured here: it’s the Microraptor.
The final spread features dinosaurs Fast and Fierce and includes Tyrannosaurus Rex, Spinosaurus and Allosaurus. Some of these beasties moved extremely fast, others had sharp claws and teeth with which they would attack and consume their prey.
Most small children are dinosaur mad so this book with its flaps, central pop-ups and brief factual snippets will be a winner for Ingela.