The Underwater Fancy-Dress Parade
Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys
Scribe
Alfie is filled with apprehension the day before the underwater fancy dress parade. He’s practised wearing his Captain starfish costume at home

so he won’t end up bottling out like on the day of the running race, or Antoinette’s reptile party.
After a sleepless night filled with scary underwater dreams, Alfie is even more sure he hasn’t the courage: “I can’t,” he tells his Mum. She however has a plan – one involving a visit to somewhere special.

It’s here that Alfie spots a little fish that likes to hide away among the corals.

“That orange fish,” his Mum explains on the way home, “was a clownfish” … “Sometimes they need to hide away… It’s just what they do.” and Alfie understands. “There’s always next year,” he tells his Dad and the cowboys on his wallpaper at bedtime. And, with such understanding parents, Alfie may well have overcome his shyness by then.
In her gorgeous retro style illustrations executed with limited colour, Allison Colpoys conveys Alex’s fearfulness beautifully and the tale is sympathetically and convincingly told – a demonstration of both the artist’s and author’s understanding of how young children try to cope with shyness/introversion.

Pom Pom Gets the Grumps
Sophy Henn
Puffin Books
Every early years teacher and parent will recognize the scenario so perfectly documented in 2015 World Book Day official illustrator, Sophy Henn’s second book. And, despite the dour-faced panda depicted on the front, it’s sheer delight from cover to cover.
Like all of us from time to time, Pom Pom wakes up in a bad mood. Uh-oh – from the very minute he gets out of bed (on the wrong side of course) it seems everything and everyone is against him. Pom Pom’s tetchiness escalates as he goes through the day: his blanky is missing, his baby brother has taken his favourite toy, there’s soggy cereal and bitty juice at breakfast time and worse, his mum is in soppy song mode. That’s just the beginning of the day through which Pom Pom “Harrumph!”s and scowls and glowers.

At nursery it’s a case of “NO!”, “NO! and “NO!” to each and every suggestion made by his friends and when he yells at them to “GO AWAY!” that’s exactly what they do. Surprise, surprise -that isn’t right either, but it’s a turning point for our surly protagonist. The little fellow sees the error of his ways and off he goes to make amends.

Harmony is restored – well let’s just say, for the time being …

Seemingly Sophy Henn knows young bears (and children) very well indeed. She achieves such depth of character seemingly effortlessly and her portrayal of Pom Pom is spot on. She manages to make him adorably cute; even when he’s in the biggest of sulks what you really want to do is to laugh and give him a big hug. In fact one could go so far as to say he deserves one for he never lashed out physically during the whole sorry day. I absolutely love her crisp, clean contemporary illustrative style and look forward eagerly to further Pom Pom capers later in the year.

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