Tag Rachel Lyon

Not Enough for Queen Fluff / Little Mouse’s Big Breakfast

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Not Enough For Queen Fluff
Rachel Lyon and Catalina Echeverri
Maverick Arts Publishing
Queen Fluff has everything a person (or a fancy bunny) could want: a large, lavishly furnished burrow full of queenly comforts, quite the opposite of all her subjects. They live in near poverty out in the Kingdom beyond the palace boundaries. Riches, as most of us know, don’t equate to happiness though, and thus it is with Queen Fluff who spends a bored, lonely existence.
So her royal bunnyness sends out a communication to all the other bunnies …

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It’s hardly the way to win friends methinks, but how do the recipients respond?
They certainly start making some plans for their royal visitor. She meanwhile, sets off with bulging bags, eagerly anticipating a welcome befitting her regal status. What she gets however, is something of a surprise, or rather a shock, as she visits burrow after burrow in search of delight.

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And what of that ten-course feast she’s set her sights on? Well, those rabbits surely know how to serve up a surprise menu; but is it one that will cause their monarch to eat her words? It might just be …

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With a rhyming text from Rachel Lyon that simply rolls off the tongue, mixed with super-cute, funny illustrations from Catalina Echeverri …

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this book has gone down very well with my audiences. I had great fun with one group suggesting their own disgusting courses to serve up to Queen Fluff.

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Ellena snuggled up for the story

Little Mouse’s Big Breakfast
Christine Pym
Nosy Crow
Little Mouse has a big appetite or so it seems; but maybe not: let’s wait and see.
We first meet our intrepid little hero one chilly evening when he’s decidedly peckish and having nothing ready for a breakfast nibble the following morning.
Fortunately though, Little Mouse knows just where to go and off he sets, scampering along the footpath, scaling the drainpipe and hopping in through an open window where on the table he spies this …

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followed quickly by a rosy apple and then a whole lot of ‘big brown biscuits’ …

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But that’s not all. Pretty soon, despite the odd doubt about the deliciousness of one or two items, he has all this precariously balanced …

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Guess what though: he then spots the ABSOLUTE perfect item for a tasty breakfast – one ‘shiny, stripy sunflower seed’ and of course he just HAS to have it … Seems someone else is after that perfect breakfast too and we know what that is …

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I wonder who gets their perfect breakfast – that would be tale telling, wouldn’t it. Suffice it to say, it’s pretty tasty.
Christine Pym’s timing is spot on, and her tale deliciously illustrated with a mix of double spreads, single pages, panels and frames. This really went down a treat with my early years audience who delighted at the ending and were eager for an immediate re-reading.

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Milo & Mucky: In Need of A Friend

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The Really Abominable Snowman
Valentina Mendicino
Walker Books
In a high Himalayan cave resides a smallish creature, with a terrible reputation. Milo, for that is the name his mother calls him, spends his time making things, cleaning, bathing and eating, not children but his favourite cherry cupcakes. Sad and lonely, he longs for a friend to share those cupcakes with. Time for a change, he decides. A makeover perhaps?

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Maybe not.
Social media? His tweets are a resounding failure and his foray into Facebook is sadly, a hilarious (for readers) case of misunderstanding.

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Undaunted Milo keeps trying until he comes across an announcement in the paper…
Surely that must be the answer but …
He’s even misunderstood by the Society of Misunderstood Creatures.

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Seemingly Milo is to remain friendless and lonely for ever? But wait; who is that bidding him ‘hello’?

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Could it be that longed for soul mate? Without wanting to spoil the ending, suffice it to say, it’s a victory for the power of cupcakes, and perseverance of course.
Valentina Mendicino’s 3D style, subtly coloured, digitally rendered illustrations convey Milo’s changing feeling and emotions (and those of the minor characters) humorously and touchingly. And there are plenty of amusing domestic details in this unusual story with misunderstandings aplenty, that has at its heart, a search for friendship and happiness. Delicious endpapers too. All in all, a tasty debut.
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Also on the theme of friendship is

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I Wish I’d Been Born a Unicorn
Rachel Lyon and Andrea Ringli
Maverick Arts Publishing
Mucky the horse has become somewhat malodorous on account of his dirty habits so the other animals avoid him. If only I’d been a unicorn, he wishes, then others might like me more. His wish is overheard by Owl who sagely tells him that true friends are concerned with feelings, not looks. He offers to help nonetheless and flies off to find the resources to make Mucky into a unicorn. The cows give him milk for the whiteness, which Frog obligingly churns, then he heads off to the beach in search of a pointy shell to serve as the horn. After a night’s work, Mucky has been transformed and is presented to his would-be friends.

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All appears to be going well until a big black cloud appears overhead. Oh-oh …
Will the other animals think less of him without his milky white coat or will Mucky realize that friendship awaits right under his brown nose?
Told in jaunty rhyme, the delightfully expressive, digitally rendered illustrations add much to this story. Those flies hovering around the whiffy Mucky are just one example of the visual humour

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and I love the idea of Frog churning the milk by swimming around in it.
Find and buy from your local bookshop: http://www.booksellers.org.uk/bookshopsearch

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