These are both Little Tiger board books – thanks to the publisher for sending them for review

Diwali
Harshita Jerath and Becky Paige

In this addition to the ‘let’s all celebrate’ series, autumn has arrived and so has Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. The series name underlines that the book’s short narrative focuses on the way Diwali is celebrated rather than its religious significance.
We follow one multigenerational family through the celebration as they clean the house ready for good luck, cook lots of delicious sweets and snacks to share, create and hang floral strings, make mandalas and finally put on their new clothes before lighting the divas to chase away the darkness. After chanting a prayer, it’s time to share some of the sweets with their neighbours and friends before sitting down for the family feast.

With vibrantly coloured cartoon style illustrations and a direct text, which uses a few Hindi words that can be understood by the context be that visual or verbal, this is a useful introduction to an important festival celebrated mostly by Hindu people.

Songs of the Seasons
Patricia Hegarty and Elinor Duffy

Eight double spreads – two for each season – take readers through the year showing the changes that take place in the natural world. The text describes some of the activities of the creatures – bees of different kinds, various birds, small mammals, insects and we visit a deciduous woodland area, a pond, a garden, an arable farm, the coast and finally some evergreen woods.
On each spread are small buttons (24 in all), that when pressed enable us to hear different sounds which help identify the animals through the changing seasons.