“The clock strikes midnight. But somebody is NOT asleep” - this is Wide-Awake Baby, the fearless leader of The Midnight Babies (Abrams, 3+, £12.99). Isabel Greenberg has created an epic adventure from familiar material: swaddled scallywags snuggled up in cradles across the world and determined to torment the adults in their lives by staying awake. Greenberg follows the gang of underage ruffians as they toddle and waddle and wobble through The Forest of Nightlights, The Sea of Stories, The Garden of Lullabies, and Rockaby Shore, though Wide Awake soon finds her army of noisemakers have been left behind: all paths lead to the Land of Nodoff. The spirit of Maurice Sendak shines through in the wilful infants’ antics and Greenberg’s surreal illustrations. Despite the potentially inspirational mischief, The Midnight Babies is a brilliant bedtime read for restless toddlers.
If a trip to the zoo is part of your family’s summer plans, then read Nishani Reed and Junissa Bianda’s Nabil Steals a Penguin (Nosy Crow, 3+, £7.99) with caution. Nabil is on holiday with his family in France when he inadvertently finds himself accidentally purloining a penguin. The penguin has decided Nabil looks like a more exciting proposition than his flippered friends and hides in Nabil’s backpack. So begins an amusing journey across the English channel, a frantic effort to hide him from his parents, and a surprising culinary celebration of Indian food. What penguin wouldn’t prefer a good curry over fish? With gentle rhyme and detailed illustrations of the odd couple’s mishaps, Nabil Steals a Penguin is a multicultural, multispecies treat.
In Meet the Maliks: Twin Detectives (Hodder, 8+, £7.99), Zanib Mian sets twin Muslim heroes on a quest to uncover a mystery of destruction at their local mosque. Maysa and Musa are opposite in personality. One can’t do anything wrong, the other can’t do anything right: apparently Maysa can’t even make reparations for her own misdeeds without mishap. When she is banned from a school trip for misbehaviour, Maysa tries to win back her parents’ approval by baking some sweet treats, but there’s a cookie thief at large in the local mosque: Maysa and Musa are determined to catch him. Mian integrates the daily detail of the characters lives and rituals into a propulsive plot. Short chapters are further enlivened by Kyan Cheng’s illustrations and text design, giving Meet the Malik’s a Diary of a Wimpy Kid appeal.
The format of Gary Northfield’s new series Leif: The Unlucky Viking (Walker Books, 8+, £7.99) has a similar visual appeal, and a similar protagonist with a propensity for calamity. Leif is a Viking wolf cub, and when his father heads off to polar bear country to explore, Leif enlists the help of a local witch to guide him in his father’s footsteps. Northfield presents Leif’s adventures in a combination of text and cartoons, with dialogue literally put in characters mouths, making for an exciting read that reluctant readers ready to move on from fully illustrated graphic novels, such as Dogman, will find engaging.
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Young readers who enjoy creative writing will find plenty of inspiration in Ten-Word Tiny Tales by Joseph Coelho and Friends (Walker Books, 5+, £14.99). Coelho, a poet, sets out the simplicity of his idea on the opening page: a story can be born from the most minimal of texts. The examples he provides illustrate the potential diversity of this truth. Rather than limit the literary engagement, the ten-word tales actually invite the reader’s imagination to continue the themed inventing: what happens next? A variety of illustrators - including Alex T .Smith, Yoko Tanaka and Shaun Tan - is an added confection for this original compendium, which will have children pulling out their notebooks to write their own tales. In case they don’t know where to start, Coelho has tips for budding writers at the end.
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George Mendoza and Doris Susan Smith’s republished classic Need a House? Call Ms. Mouse (NYRB, 3+, $18.95) will have kids designing the most elaborate abodes for their characters to live in. Originally published in 1981, Ms Mouse is a fascinating heroine: an architect with a range of animal clients. Mendoza’s suggestive text has room for the reader’s imagination to develop their own ideas about the animals’ needs and desires, while Smith excels in visualising the details: Rabbit’s underground two-storey burrow; Caterpillar’s cosy fruit-stuffed cocoon; Lizard’s rocky cliff house, complete with roof terrace for sunbathing. Ms Mouse herself, meanwhile, likes the simple life, Mendoza tells us on the final page before asking: “What about you?”
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Fuaimeanna na Farraige: Sounds of the Sea (My Irish Books, 0+, €16) is a collaboration of text, image and music from Risteard Mac Liam, Tatyana Feeney and Anna Jordan. A sturdy board book and leabhar fuaime, it is seaside-themed, with layered illustrations of sea, sky and sea creatures galore: gulls and gannets overhead; children on the strand; jellyfish and crabs on the ocean floor. Jordan’s recordings feature readings as well as traditional instrumentation, with a glossary at the end providing a visual dictionary. Fuaimeanna na Farraige will be a welcome addition to a growing Gaeilgeoir library.
