Summer 2010
In the same week that Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo vociferously criticised his local library service in Devon for closing 12 libraries comes National Bookstart Day. Bookstart is a charity which aims to provide every baby in the UK with a pack of books and which gifts books to toddlers and young children through health and early years professionals. Bookstart subscribes to Morpurgo’s belief that books ‘are part of the richness of our lives’ and that they are a child’s key, both to knowledge and to ‘imaginative dreams’. It understands how important it is for a child to see an adult enjoy reading and so it organises activities through local libraries, the very places Morpurgo cites as under threat, which encourage parents and carers to read with their children in ways that show that reading is fun. Bookstart’s theme this year is the seaside and there are lots of lovely books on a beach theme that will keep children of all ages happy this summer.
Usborne has just reproduced its popular sticker series in a smaller format and one of these is the Seashore Sticker Book [ISBN 978-1-4095-2059-7 pbk £4.99] which provides over a hundred brightly-coloured stickers of sea creatures and plants that will help you tell your gannet from a guillimot and your common hermit crab from the velvet swimming one! This is the perfect thing to bring in the beach bag and children love the intricacy of the process of peeling and sticking the little pieces into their correct positions.
In the Usborne Young Puzzles series there is a Puzzle Holiday [ ISBN 978-1-4095-1687-3 Padded Hbk £7.99] in which Katy and Tim head off to the Puzzle Holiday Park. Brenda Haw’s busy illustrations follow their journey and the many things they can do once there. Each double page is puzzle which the child can score and there are ‘stinky skunks’ hiding in each for good measure. The lovely thing about this book is that the glorious detail of the pictures mean that the child can construct his/her own stories within them as well as following the one provided.
Also from Usborne comes the series The Secret Mermaid by Sue Mongredien in which an ordinary little girl called Molly Holmes finds, through a sea shell, that she is in fact a secret mermaid and has adventures under the sea. Some parents are dismayed by series like this of ‘pretty books’ for little girls but you shouldn’t worry – publishers are clever and know they need the girls to pick the books up but rather like Glitterwings – the shiny pretty cover is a hook into a well-written series which at times touches on serious things like conservation of the oceans and the threats to sea life.
If you have a little boffin whose head is more usually in the clouds than in the waves then a book co-written by Stephen Hawking and his wife Lucy, just re-issued by Corgi [ISBN 978-0-552-55961-4 pbk £6.99] is the prefect thing to bring to the beach. George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt, I think does that rare thing of making a book as varied and interesting an object to a child reader as a computer screen. There is a story in a really pleasing font, with charming illustrations by Gary Parons, fantastic photography in sections called ‘Picture Files’ and child-friendly versions of current space theories written by the scientists themselves and signed off with their first names!
If you are interested in finding out about Bookstart activities here, then contact your local library where you can also access the Bookstart packs for babies and young children www.ni-libraries.net.