Pablo and Splash
Sheena Dempsey
Bloomsbury Children’s Books

Pablo and Splash are penguin pals living in Antarctica. Pablo, a home-loving creature, is perfectly satisfied with life; he loves the cold climate, the ice and consuming krill at every meal. Splash is more adventurous and yearns for a holiday in a warm sunny destination. After puzzling about how to get to a new exciting place, the two cascade into a scientist’s laboratory. The owner clearly has designs on them but they make a getaway thanks to her TimeBender machine,

next stop not sunny Fiji, the Bahamas or the Costa del Sol and fortunately not the sun (though that destination is a narrow miss); rather they find themselves in the Cretaceous Period. There aren’t any mocktails or water slides as Splash was hoping; instead the sandy terrain is full of very hungry dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Fortunately the friends succeed in evading the beasties. Not so the TimeBender however; this is badly damaged by the dinos.

Can the penguins manage to fix the ailing machine or are they doomed to be forever stuck far far from their lovely icy home? As always it looks as though it will be down to Pablo to come up with a solution.

This crazy comedy is Sheena Dempsey’s first graphic novel creation and what fun it is. The penguins’ facial expressions are a hoot and their bubble speak full of giggle-inducing ‘krilly’ word play. I suspect you’ll find it hard to resist this one. Let’s hope we see more of this delectable duo.