0-5 years
Matilda's Cat
Emily Gravett
£10.99
9780230745377
GRAVETT has a particular knack for using expressive illustrations and a bare minimum of words to tell an entire story. For instance, her book Orange Pear Apple Bear contains 80 per cent of its vocabulary within the title. Here, in enviably uncluttered fashion, we learn almost everything about what Matilda wants, and what her cat wants. And they don't always meet in the middle: Matilda loves dressing up in a furry, stripy costume complete with ears and a tail, and doing cat things – chasing balls of wool, hiding in boxes, riding bikes and, um, having tea parties. Whereas her actual cat's a much more sedentary soul who regards most of what Matilda gets up to with dismay and alarm, and would much prefer a nap. It all goes to show, of course, that best friends can still have very different interests – a life lesson that's conveyed in a warm, delicate fashion.
5-9 years
The Tales of Olga da Polga
Michael Bond / Catherine Rayner
£5.99
9780192731944
Michael Bond's adventures of Olga the guinea pig might not be quite as well known as his Paddington Bear books, but on the quiet they've been entertaining generations of children. Now today's little readers get their chance. This is an attractive volume that boasts a fresh batch of illustrations, by contemporary picture book star Rayner (Augustus and His Smile, Sylvia and Bird), which strike just the right endearing tone. One lucky day Olga makes the move from pet shop display cage to the home of the Sawdust family. There she befriends her new fellow pets, Noel (a cat), Fangio (a hedgehog) and Graham (a tortoise). She soon has them all in thrall with far-fetched yarns of her life outside. But though she means well, her real-life exploits lean more towards the disastrous, and her friends are often required to step in. All told, the animal pals provide gentle, delightful fun that's fast proving to be timeless.
9-12 years
For the Record
Ellie Irving
9780552563598
£5.99
Ten-year-old Luke lives on Jersey with his mum, in the curious little village of Port Bren. He's pretty anxious about going up to high school, but suddenly that gets dwarfed by a whole new threat. The island's due to gain a new waste incineration plant, and consequently Luke's house has a date with a bulldozer. So he hatches an audacious scheme to combine his life-long fascination with world records with a bid to save the village. If the locals can break 50 world records in a week, it'll be deemed too historically important to knock down. Easy, right?
What follows is a glorious mix of the very, very silly – as the dotty villagers throw themselves into breaking every record they can think of – and the more thoughtful, as Luke negotiates around his recently bereaved mum, whilst coping with his own grief for his late dad. That's not to mention the machinations of those greedy parties plotting against him. But at all times this remains a wonderfully breezy read, populated with immensely likeable characters up to their eyes in peculiar situations. Winningly daft stuff, then, but with a careful dose of substance too.
