Tag the problem of rubbish

Uncle Pete and the Forest of Lost Things

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Red Reading Hub is thrilled to be part of the blog tour for this new Uncle Pete and Tiny Mouse book.

Uncle Pete and the Forest of Lost Things
David C. Flanagan, illustrated by Will Hughes
Little Door Books

Barely giving themselves time to recover from their magical blanket delivery – but time enough to consume a fair amount of their favourite foods – Uncle Pete and his indomitable sidekick, TM, are off again. Now they want to track down their plane, abandoned when it ran out of stardust; surely it couldn’t have ended up in the Forest of Lost Things could it? And what’s more the two couldn’t really be thinking of entering this alarming-sounding place where it’s recommended nobody sets foot, to search for it could they? 

Of course they could, even when squirrel leader, Shona, is horrified at the notion. Nonetheless she does make sure the adventurers are equipped to the best of her ability before they sally forth, aided and abetted by the Squirrelcoaster. Their journey takes them over land and into peril deep, deep beneath the sea – bother those cans of beans – but thank the universe for those emergency underpants of Uncle Pete’s, one of the more sensible items he stuffed into that rucksack of his. Finally the two, by different means, reach the forest, but then they need to locate one another.

Uncle Pete has an encounter with an owl that’s far from happy about the present state of the forest, an erstwhile peaceful, magical place and now far too full of rubbish. 

Said owl also talks of giant cats, incredibly grumpy ones; the same felines that TM has already met and happily not been consumed by on account of her extreme smallness. Happily too, Uncle Pete and TM are soon reunited and the search for the plane continues. However, there’s also the pressing problem of tidying and decluttering the forest and recycling as much as possible, that the former raises. Recycling though is getting a bit ahead of things as the lost plane must be located for that to happen. On the lost theme too is a little polar bear, Berg, that they come upon and invite to join their adventure.

An adventure about which I’ll say no more, other than that there are further twists and turns, thousands of fireflies, a multi-stage plan fuelled by the thought of feasting on favourite foods- again! – a terrific squash and a squeeze; plus a finale that leads neatly into Uncle Pete and TM’s next adventure. 

Hurrah! say all the readers of and listeners to, this terrific tale with its important environmental theme, as well as the thrills and spills, kindness and consideration one has come to expect from the fearless friends. Not forgetting the quirky drawings by Will Hughes that help to make this an ideal read for those fairly new to chapter books.

Make sure you check out the other stops on this blog tour too.

The Hundred Decker Bus / The Hundred Decker Rocket

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The Hundred Decker Bus
The Hundred Decker Rocket
Mike Smith
Macmillan Children’s Books

New to me but a reissue of his debut picture book is Mike Smith’s The Hundred Decker Bus. Tired of his usual routine, the bus driver takes inspiration from a passing hot air balloon and decides to take a new route that he’s never before noticed. Imagine being on that bus: what would your reaction be to a diversion to nobody knows where? That of the passengers (whose numbers increase en route), is one of happy abandon, as after a day’s driving the bus reaches …

But that is only a small part of their adventure about which I’ll say no more other than the sky’s the limit … or maybe it’s not.

This fantastical story with its awesome fold-out page will grip youngsters as they explore not only that spread but every one of Mike Smith’s humorous, highly detailed scenes be they large or small.

Share this uplifting picture book reissue either with one child, a group or a whole class. It has huge potential in the classroom.

So too does The Hundred Decker Rocket. This begins in Ivy’s bedroom where she’s just finished creating a massive telescope through which she sees a strange and beautiful ‘something’ glimmering in the sky far off. An adventure beckons Ivy and her trusty dog Eddie, but that will require another round of constructing.

Several days later the two are blasting off skywards in their rocket, landing unceremoniously, after what seems an incredibly long journey. on a planet entirely covered in rubbish.

Eddie learns from the resident environmentally un-savvy aliens that they’ve messed up their home and now want to leave and find a new place to live – if Ivy and Eddie help them build a spaceship that is. The construction continues apace as more and more aliens appear and yet more rubbish accumulates and is used, leaving the planet much cleaner.

With a hundred decks duly built, they deem the rocket ready for boarding and blast off takes place that night.

Eventually the aliens agree on what they feel is a suitable new planet and down they go … but there’s a strange familiarity about it …

With a great final twist, incredibly detailed, zany scenes that youngsters will pore over for hours revelling in the wealth of humorous touches, including speech bubbles and onomatopoeic noises off, and its fold-out page, this is a cracking book. Highly relevant is the vital environmental message about the importance of caring for our planet.

If you’re after a fun story or a super starting point for an ecological discussion that will galvanise children to take care what they throw out and where/how they dispose of it, this is it.