Babies, balloons and grandads

PICTURE BOOKS: ANNA CAREYselects some eye-catching new picture books, including two stunning stories by Irish authors

AS ANYONE WHO HAS ever met a baby knows, the title of David Bedford and Tor Freeman’s Babies Don’t Bite (Hodder Children’s Books, £10.99) is a bare-faced lie. The book is the story of Hegley, a little horse in dungarees, who is nervously awaiting the arrival of a new sibling. He’s heard terrible things about babies, but then he meets some adorable animal infants, and by the time his little sister arrives he realises that “babies are fab and they love their big brothers and sisters to bits!” The illustrations are cute but not cutesy, and the story is charming (if overly optimistic).

There are more animals in Stephen Davies’s and Christopher Corr’s The Goggle-Eyed Goats (Andersen Press, £10.99), in which a family in Mali try to stop their father selling their herd of goggle-eyed goats. The story is fun and the artwork vivid – the goats are particularly great – but the exoticised depiction of Africa (the children’s father has three wives) left me uncomfortable.

Animals also take centre stage in Alison Murray’s delightful Little Mouse (Orchard, £10.99). A small girl doesn’t want her mum to call her “little mouse” because, as she says, she’s as brave as a lion and can stomp like a bear. But she realises that sometimes it’s okay to be cuddly as well – like a little mouse.

More lessons are learned in Tony Ross’s funny and lively I Want to Win (Andersen Press, £10.99), featuring his popular character Little Princess. She’s refreshingly unprincessy, donning a white smock rather than pink frills. Here she discovers that while everyone lets her win at home in the palace, at school the playing field is a bit more level, and other kids win all the prizes. But as she eventually discovers, sometimes it’s enough just to try your best.

The Australian writer and illustrator Bob Graham’s books can sometimes feel a little overly earnest. A Bus Called Heaven (Walker Books, £11.99) is no exception, but his artwork is appealing, and it’s hard to resist this good-hearted story of an abandoned bus that brings together a multicultural neighbourhood.

There’s a much more bleak view of the world in The Viewer (Hodder Children’s Books, £7.99), by Gary Crew and Shaun Tan. A reissue of Tan’s first picture book, aimed firmly at older children, it’s the dark and slightly pompous story of a boy called Tristan who finds an old View-Master with discs that show the rise and fall of human life on Earth.

Two Irish-born authors follow up their previous stunning books with equally compelling and beautifully illustrated stories.

Fans of Chris Judge’s debut, The Lonely Beast, won’t be disappointed by the Dubliner’s excellent The Great Explorer (Andersen Press, £5.99), in which a boy travels the world in search of his lost explorer father.

And David Mackintosh, the Belfast-born man behind the wonderful Marshall Armstrong Is New to Our School, makes a welcome return with The Frank Show (Harper Collins, £10.99). The narrator is a small boy who has to talk to his class about a family member. He’s stuck talking about his crotchety Grandad Frank, and his classmates’ relatives seem much more interesting. There’s more to Frank than meets the eye, however, as our hero and his classmates discover. Mackintosh’s squiggly pencil drawings are a delight, and the story delivers a positive message with subversive wit and charm.

Anna Carey is a freelance journalist. Her debut novel for young adults, The Real Rebecca, won the Senior Children’s Book of the Year award at last year’s Irish Book Awards