Kids Book Club - November

0-4 years
I Want My Hat Back
Jon Klassen
9781406336832
£11.00
WHEN Bear loses his beloved hat, he scours the woods for it, and questions his fellow animals – a frog, a deer, a snake, a rabbit - about its possible whereabouts. Eagle-eyed readers could spot clues to the culprit along the way. On paper, it might sound unexceptional. But what really brings this picture book to life is the quality of Klassen's illustrations: understated, laconic and wonderfully expressive. He's a hulking great bear of very few words, but every gesture, every pause tells us just how much he wants that hat back. It's also mildly subversive: woe betide whoever's taken it. A masterpiece in deadpan comedy for pre-schoolers, it's something a bit unusual, a distinctive and superior book in every way.

 

4-6 years
Bumper Book of Bob
Simon Bartram
9781848770546
£9.99
IF you've never come across this Bob, he's not a builder: he's actually an astronaut. Not so much the man in the moon as a lunar caretaker, over nearly ten years he's starred in a whole string of picture books and adventures. Bartram's books have an endearing, retro look: Bob's a spaceman as he would have been imagined in the Fifties, complete with Dan Dare features, ribbed white space suit and impeccable manners. This is a great introduction to Bob's charmingly innocent, wonky outer-space world, overflowing with stories, puzzles, and even recipes. Delightfully old-fashioned, and a lovely item in its own right.

 6-8 years
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again
Frank Cottrell Boyce
9780230757738
£10.99
IT seemed like an odd match at first: one of the sharpest, funniest writers in contemporary children's fiction and a slightly creaky, musty family favourite. But in the event, that's the whole point. Cottrell Boyce brings Chitty back to life in a thoroughly fresh and modern fashion, fizzing with character, humour and invention. The trick of this sequel, the first in a new trilogy, is that the original jalopy's sentient engine is transplanted into a camper van – and its new owners, the Tooting family, are thus launched on a crash-course for hi-jinks and excitement. But other parties are bound to notice a remarkable machine like Chitty... and they won't all have jollity in mind. As strange and suspenseful as it is warm and funny, this is a masterful, twisty-turny storytelling, and a genuinely full-blooded revival.

 
9-12 years
Dark Lord: The Teenage Years
Jamie Thomson
9781408315118
£5.99
BRILLIANTLY simple ideas such as this have a habit of going far. Thomson, previously a prolific writer of 'choose your own adventure' fantasy books, tells the tale of the fearsome other-wordly Dark Lord, who comes a cropper and falls to Earth in the form of a teenage boy known as Dirk Lloyd. There he suffers the indignity of attending school, making friends, doing homework and fending off fascinated psychotherapists, all the while pining for his sinister kingdom. In his quest to return home, Dirk gathers young humans around him to do his wicked bidding, but they think he's just a good laugh. One female acquaintance even develops a soft spot for him. Narrated by the haughty, indignant Dirk himself - a surprisingly sympathetic (anti)hero - it's an uproariously funny culture-clash comedy. Two further instalments are due to follow, and a film adaptation is already on the cards.


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