The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont and Raymond Briggs

The Elephant and the Bad Baby is one of my 3-year-old’s favourite books. It is an ideal bedtime story as it has a rhythm to it that can lull your child to sleep.

The elephant meets a bad baby so takes him for a ride. Along the way he asks if the bad baby would like buns, lollipops etc. from various shops they pass, and the bad baby always says yes. This leads to the shop owners such as the baker chasing after them in an ever increasing band. But the bad baby never once said please so gets his comeuppance.

I know some other reviewers have criticised aspects of the book. They said that the barrow boy is smoking a cigar on the five or so pages he appears on, but the pictures date back to a time, perhaps the 1950s, before supermarkets ruled, a time when grocers and sweetshops filled the high street instead and when barrow boys smoked cigars. And I am quite confident that these pictures will not influence my child to smoke, and that the more likely influences will be her parents’ and her friends’ behaviour when she is many years older.

Also I've seen reviewers moan because the baby falls off the elephant. The picture makes it look like a bad fall from a suddenly halting elephant, one that would hurt a lot. However again no one in their right mind would allow their baby to ride a real life elephant in this way, and this is a work of fiction in which the baby falls off but is not hurt.

But for me and my daughter it is a great book with great pictures showing England as it once was (although there is a running elephant there too), and there is a lovely rhythm to the story with nice repetition making the book ideal for young listeners.

Amazon UK link: The Elephant and the Bad Baby

Publication date: 30 Aug 1971

The Legend of Frog by Guy Bass

I read this with my 7-year-old daughter over several bedtimes. She really enjoyed it wanting more each time, and laughing out loud at funny bits in the story. She said, “He goes on an amazing adventure to the end of the world, but he finds out it’s not really the end of the world. My favourite part was when Frog went to see the princess, because she has a funny voice.”

The story starts (once upon the end of the world…) with Frog stuck on an island at the edge of the end of the world. Frog has “bright, mottled green skin, bulbous yellow eyes, and not a single hair on his head.” Basically he is like a talking frog, except he has a destiny to fulfill, what with him being the “Royal Majesty, Lord of all Kingdoms, Rightful Ruler of the World… Prince Frog.”

So he ventures into the end of the world which turns out to be the not-so ended world, the fate of which is in his hands when he comes up against the Kroakans, aliens that are frog-like like him but want to bring the world to an end. This is the part where Frog must decide his fate which is intertwined with that of the world's.

My daughter enjoyed it very much and found it funny, so it comes highly recommended. The humour comes from the surreal-ness of situations, e.g. having a sheep as a trusty steed, and the characters, e.g. a barbarian who has a catchphrase. I never did master the Kroakan language bits though and didn't feel every chapter heading needed a Kroakan translation along with the English, not that I knew until half-way, but that is a small thing.

Amazon UK Link: THE LEGEND OF FROG

Publication date: 10 Jan 2014

More: The Legend of Frog activity pack and more

Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

This book is essentially a love story set in World War II, and the regrets unfolding from it many years down the line in 2010.

Dorothy Sinclair is the owner of the suitcase, a suitcase that has a role to play throughout the book linking the past and the modern day. She was 39 in 1940 when she met Jan Pietrykowski, the love of her life, although circumstances contrived against her, with the War being one of them of course. Fast forward to 2010 and she is 109 and has a lot to get off of her chest, and that will be to her grand-daughter Roberta who has already discovered that some of her grandmother’s (or babunia’s) backstory doesn’t match up and wants to discover why.

There are two perspectives to this story. The first is that of Dorothy, who was “a thoughtful woman, a woman of intelligence” who “just wanted Jan”. Theirs was a chance encounter, but love at first sight. 

Then there is Roberta, the grand-daughter, with the modern-day perspective, and she also has an unfulfilled love story to tell with her life always being spent at the bookshop “the Old and New, the place where I am always to be found,” hence the book spines on the front cover. She is a collector of all the letters, postcards, drawings and stuff like that that can be found in the second-hand books that come into her shop. This includes one her grandmother had, a “stupid letter which seems to refute all that my grandmother has told me about her early life.”

All in all this is a heart-warming tale of lost love, of the one who got away, and the one that didn't. 

Publication date: 27 February 2014

Amazon UK link: Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase

Reasons She Goes to the Woods by Deborah Kay Davies

This is no “teddy bear’s picnic.” The book is about Pearl and it paints her as a destructive, violent soul. It doesn’t matter who, whether it be her friends, her mother, her baby brother, her self, she inflicts physical pain on them all. It’s brutal and almost made me give up the book because, to me, it was so sick.

The story is told in vignettes. Each chapter is exactly one page long with one long paragraph. And between each chapter is one blank page with nothing on it apart from a chapter heading. On first impressions I thought this was clever writing to always get each chapter the same length, although my friend pointed out that it was a waste of paper.

After the brutal beginning things get a little less brutal as you follow the rest of Pearl’s childhood where things happen. Her mother is loony mad and deteriorates and Pearl gets alienated from her family and friends. The end.

At least she didn’t kill herself.

Publication date: 6 February 2014

Amazon UK link: REASONS SHE GOES TO THE WOODS

Tidal Shift by Dora Heldt

“Tidal Shift” is a German novel translated into English. This was one of the best-selling titles of 2010 in Germany. It spent 57 weeks on the hardcover best-seller list and 31 weeks on the paperback list. However the translation here seems to have diminished the impact of the English version. I feel the situations could have drawn more humour. And also the translation isn't great. For example instead of toyboy the book says boy toys, and instead of “touch wood” the book uses the translation “knock on wood”. So I think the humour that is present here in the book could have come out more with a better translation. Also this is an American English translation too, with soccer instead of football, pants instead of trousers, and I would have preferred a British English translation of course.

The book follows the family of Christine, 46, who is going for a 2-week vacation with her boyfriend Johann, 48, in the German resort of Sylt, “renowned for it’s breath-taking twenty-five-mile-long sandy beach”. They quickly meet Aunt Inge, 64 – “Aren’t you two a bit old for canoodling in public like that?” – who says she wants to change her life, but is being secretive about what exactly she means, which worries Christine. But at the same time Christine is resistant to change herself - “Don’t take the risk of doing something new. You’re far too old for that. Heaven forbid that things could actually go your way in life. So just leave it to everyone else to make changes. Like your aunt Inge – at least she’s got the guts!” So maybe this is another contributor to her anxiety. 

Meanwhile with aunt Inge being secretive it leads the whole family to conclude the wrong things, leading to comical misunderstandings. Heinz, Charlotte’s dad, Walter, aunt Inge’s husband, and Kalli, a friend of Heinz’s, are three OAPs that go on capers similar to those from “Last of the Summer Wine” as they search for answers, and the so-called toyboy.

Overall then a humourous story, but I think the translation could have been better. 

Publication date: 23 May 2013

Amazon UK link: TIDAL SHIFT