Baby book reviews

Every morning when we get up, Daughter empties her toy box and ignores everything she's taken out. Dutifully, she then crawls over to her book basket and begins the day's play in earnest, carefully selecting books and presenting them to me in turn.When it's time for her to play by herself, she'll close the book, take it off me and sit by herself, happily turning pages.

That being the way of things, I thought I'd review the books that we've been reading in the hopes that you can find something exciting and new. If there are any books you would like to see reviewed, please drop me a line and I'll see if I can get hold of it.

I thought we would start off with Egg by Alex T. Smith. .

This book follow the story of Foxy Du Bois and the aptly named Egg. Written in a tongue-in-cheek tone that will amuse grown-ups as well as children, it is essentially the tale of Hansel and Gretel retold. Egg arrives at Foxy's house - "Of all the suspicious looking houses, in all the deserted woods, in all the world, he had to roll up to hers..." - where she sets about trying to fatten him up so that she can eat him. Of course, there's a 'twist' at the end of the tale in which the plucky Egg comes out on top. All in all, a very nice modernisation of a classic story.

Daughter seemed to like this book too, stroking the pictures of Foxy on each page. The colourful, collage style of illustrations managed to hold her attention for over half of the book which, when reading to a 12 month old,  is a fair achievement. Not quite as successful as Eric Hill's Spot or the Meg and Mog stories in that respect, I think this book is aimed at an older audience. That said, Daughter kept fetching the book for me to look through with her again and again so it must work for her on some level.

Overall, I would say that this is an excellent buy for children over 12 months old. I imagine it to be a great way to open dialogue about where eggs come from, animals eating other animals and breakfast.

Join us again soon for  Norman the Slug with a Silly Shell. :)