A new read-aloud favourite, doughnuts with world-conquering ambitions, high fantasy from Katherine Rundell, and more
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his year’s standout works for children include joyous picture books, gloriously bizarre nonfiction and stories of courage, companionship and rapturous flight – testament to the human need for connection, justice and freedom.
In picture books, Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, the author-illustrator team behind We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, collaborate again on the exuberant Oh Dear, Look What I Got! (Walker), in which a shopping trip is beset by rhyming errors (a parrot for a carrot, a snake for a cake). It all results in an ever more despairing refrain: “Do I want that? No I do not!” Oxenbury’s joyfully expressive huddles of animal and human characters heighten the sense of mayhem in this bouncy, cumulative delight, boasting all the ingredients of a perennial read-aloud favourite.
More seriously, Annie Booker’s The Great Bear (Two Hoots) is a lyrical, haunting story of the polar bear spirit that protects the oceans, and the human greed that threatens their rich life. This beautiful debut is both urgent and hopeful, its trailing kelp and luminous green waters contrasting vividly with black-smudge smoke and the choking cables of crammed fishing nets.
