Little Oleg
Margaret and John Cort
Hodder Children’s Books
A special 50^th anniversary reissue of a classic picture book from the Cort husband and wife partnership.
Eric and Oleg are great friends. When Oleg’s slumbers are disturbed one night by a banging on his door, he discovers an alarmed Eric. “Come quickly! he urges. “My house is on fire.” Off dashes Oleg leaving Eric in a state of collapse only to find that nothing can be done to save the house. Good friend that he is, Oleg offers to share his home with his pal and agrees to help him build a new one.

From then on, Eric really does take advantage of his unselfish host eating him out of house and home, and leaving him to do most of the work building the new house. Thus, Oleg’s vegetable crop is neglected and he’s forced to ask the miller for a loan.
When he asks Eric for some help however, Oleg is given an old coat and this leads to a turn in his fortune,

thanks to the gold buttons with which it is adorned. But is his erstwhile friend ready to share in his good luck: what do you think?
A charming book with delightful retro illustrations executed with a limited colour palette. The whole thing has something of a folksy feel to it that works so well with the rather mannered telling.

It’s a longish story so it might need two sessions; equally, children at that in-between stage just before totally assured reading will enjoy it as a solo read.

The Unexpected Crocodile
Kim Kane and Sara Acton
Allen & Unwin
It has been raining buckets for weeks and there’s water everywhere – even in the chops awaiting cooking: Peggy and her family are expecting guests for dinner. Suddenly there is a Snap Snap! Tap Tap! at the door. It’s not the Dawson’s however, but a dapper-looking crocodile sporting red bow tie and clutching a matching brolly.

Unbothered by the offer of soggy bakery buns, he is eager to join the dinner party and so is invited in. Not long after the Dawson’s duly turn up bearing “a little croquembouche we whipped up earlier.” as Mrs Dawson puts it.

Seemingly the Dawsons are far from your ideal guests: the boys are extremely picky eaters and a game of parental one-upmanship rapidly ensues until Peggy’s mother offers coleslaw to the crocodile. “ No thank you. … I’d care for Mrs Dawson,” he replies and SNAP! From there on things go from bad to worse (though perhaps not from the host’s viewpoint) as the crocodile demolishes the rest of the Dawson family one by one leaving only …

Moreover, he has the audacity to leave before desert having responded to the host’s “Do you always eat the guests? It’s a terrible habit.” With “Not usually … it must be the weather.”
One cannot help wondering if the illustrator was perhaps a pupil of Quentin Blake: her ink/watercolours do bear a slight resemblance to the master artist. She captures that croc’s personality to perfection and her wry scenes are a fine foil for Kim Kane’s dryly-humorous writing. Kane’s matter of fact way of telling reminds me of a cross between Roald Dahl and Paul Jennings. Her word-play is wonderful too and will amuse adults readers aloud as well as the intended child audience, as will Peggy’s mother’s response to the whole sorry evening. What a great introduction to farce this book is, while the fact that young Peggy is twice shown with a book showing a crocodile – once at the beginning of the evening before the arrival of any guests

and once when they’ve all gone – leaves room for audience interpretation, as does the final endpaper scene.
I do hope this story (that originated in Australia) gets the UK exposure it deserves.

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