Your Hand in My Hand
Mark Sperring and Britta Teckentrup
Orchard Books
As winter is turning to spring we join a mouse parent and child in a litany to nature through the seasons as they walk hand in hand. Together they encounter trees bejewelled with singing birds,

the glorious blues and yellows of the woodland flowers, experience the wildness of the wind as they splash through puddles and wonder at a rainbow.

Then come summer’s glowing meadows alive with birds, butterflies and other creatures large and small, as well as the delights of paddling in the warm sea. Autumn too brings gifts – of acorns, berries, conkers, fungi and leaves glowing golden, orange, red and brown as they start to tumble.

Then when winter takes hold once more, the pair snuggle closer together through frost and snow safe in the knowledge, “With your hand in my hand … we’ll never feel lost.”
This book is an absolute joy to share with young children. Sperring’s gentle rhyming text is perfectly paced so one can linger long over each spread and savour the colours, shapes and patterns of Britta Teckentrup’s eloquent scenes along with the mouse and child.
Buy from Amazon

On the Day You Were Born
Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks
Allen & Unwin (Murdoch Books)
‘My daddy said,
On the day you were born, I wrapped you up warm and took you for a walk to see the world.’
A new father takes his new baby out into the world, and as they walk, it’s as if like his infant, he too is seeing it as new. What a truly wonderful walk it was taking them through sparkling puddles after the rain had stopped, when sleepy night creatures woke to say hello and the honey-scented air was filled with the buzz of bees,

where a duckling found its family once again; a walk past an old tree of special significance, where friendly animals were almost overwhelming and berries glowed on the bushes, and crickets sang and butterflies danced among the glorious wild flowers. Then as day gave way to night the full moon shone to light the way home where, ‘My daddy said, …
‘I put you back in your mother’s arms and that night we were the world, the three of us together.’
This celebration of a new life is poetry in motion. Brooks glowing scenes, so rich in detail, texture and colour are the perfect complement for Margaret Wild’s lyrical text.
A gorgeous gift for a young child, new or not so new, and surely one to engender feelings of awe and wonder about the natural world.
Buy from Amazon
Find and buy from your local bookshop:

http://www.booksellers.org.uk/bookshopsearch