Tag Amelia Best

Don’t Mix Up My Farm / What’s Scarier than a Spider? / I’m Not Scared, You Are!

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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.

Friends, Shapes and Scares Board Book Style

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

Let’s Make Friends
Leah Osakwe and Becky Paige

This is a simple exploration and celebration of friends and friendship for the very young. The author uses similes to liken friends to a wide variety of things – a yummy breakfast to give you a good start to the day; a bouncy trampoline that’s ‘there for you through all your ups and downs’, a soft snuggly blanket that wraps you in warmth and love, a guide on an adventure helping you follow your dreams. On gloomy days, just like the calming glow of lamplight, they bring brightness and cheer; they’ll always make space for you. Friends help you blossom into whoever you are meant to be, just like a garden where flowers bloom and so much more. I love the concluding spread that likens friends to sets of unmatched socks.
This is one to share and talk about with nursery friends.

Nibbles Shapes
Emma Yarlett

Nibbles the book-eating monster is so ravenous he’s started sinking his teeth into shapes. He gobbles circles, chomps at squares, takes small bites from a star then moves on to attacking triangles, diamonds, rectangles, even arrows. He’s saved his favourite till last; it’s a large pink heart ‘for me and you’ so it’s said, but before we can catch him to say thank you he’s made a hasty exit right through the back cover of this, now very holey, little book. Small humans will enjoy following the shape devourer through the pages.

What’s Scarier than a Shark?
Amelia Best

Not for the faint hearted is this sequence of mock scary marine creature confrontations. First to go on the attack is crab but not for long for a biting beastie more often found in fresh waters is on the look out for something to gobble.. Next is a killer whale but according to our shrimp narrator, that too has made, not a catch but a mistake. What about the swordfish – predatory it might be, but has it met its match with that enormous octopus? Angler fish look terrifying but what is lurking nearby? Something with a tail that is more than a tad terrifying though the angler doesn’t yet know that. Finally along comes a shark intent on devouring our narrator but there’s a surprise in store and it’s lurking behind a double flap.
Peek-a-boo with a difference assuredly; little ones will enjoy the fun of discovering what is revealed when they lift the flap on each of Amelia Best’s brightly coloured spreads..