Tea With A Tiger

I'm quite sure you all know the slightly barking, but wonderful book The Tiger Who Came To Tea by Judith Kerr. It's a favourite with lots of little ones.

And of course her other books, the Mog stories. If you're a fan you should get yourself to The Museum of Childhood quick smart. There is an exhibition of the original illustrations for the books, and a giant hungry tiger waiting to be fed in Sophie's kitchen. It finishes next weekend - so hurry!

It's one of those places that has been on my 'visit this' list for ages, the museum is fantastic fun, with lots of activities on throughout the day for little ones and a trip down memory lane for us oldies as you weave through all the displays of toys from yesteryear.

 

It was quite a magical day, it was a sharp reminder just how quickly childhood goes by, and how children really always come back to the simplest toys, anything is fun with a dose of imagination. 

These wise words on a blind sum it all up perfectly.

"There is little that gives children greater pleasure than when a grown-up lets himself down to their level... and plays with them as an equal"  Sigmund Freud.

Enjoy the rest of the holidays, playing. I intend to. x

 

books and covers

Do you judge a book by it's cover? I do, this is definitely true when it comes to children's books. I'm always attracted to the illustrations first. I'm rarely disappointed.

I'm newly in love with the wonderful children's books by Oliver Jeffers.  We have had How To Catch a Star for a while. But we were all totally blown away with The Incredible Book Eating Boy, we've had this out from the library, and we keep going back and finding it again, and again. 

The story is of a boy who is distracted one day and accidently licks a book, then eats a word, then a page, and before long he's eating whole books. 

The more he eats, the cleverer he gets, he wants to be the smartest boy on earth. He loves it, even though everyone tells him it's no good for him.

Until one day, everything starts going wrong - everything gets jumbled up in his head and it's embarassing to speak. He stops eating books, but doesn't know what to do. Then he picks up a book and reads, and learns and  eats broccoli.

I love it, we love it, Little Missy can't put it down. And the illustrations are charming, the characters are uncomplicated and the scenes incorporate old pages from books and words float around, it's quite enchanting. I think a copy will have to come and live here forever. 

We're also loving The Great Paper Caper, I could get a little obsessive here, but again the illustrations had me. 

Branches mysteriously start to go missing in the woods, the animals turn detective to find out who's taking them. They follow the clues and track down the culprit and then hold a hearing. 

When bear tells his story, they feel sad that he had no-one to turn to for help. They then set about helping him make the best paper plane so he can win the competition that his ancestors had previously held the title for. Bear plants new trees to make up for his crime. Charming and you really feel bears loneliness in the book, magical.

I know I'm showing pictures of books here, despite my rant over copyright and images on the internet. 

I'm sucking up my hypocrisy.

If you fancy joining in and sharing a book you're into right now, send me a link to a post you write and I'll add it to this one so we can all see what you're reading. Novel, cookbook, children's book, you choose. 

Link back to here and share some book love. 

Flaming Nora is loving Splash, a children's book

take a look!

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