This mega-sized non-fiction title is without doubt one of the most striking books about space I've seen. It's superbly well-produced and designed, with high-quality photographs and illustrations. Sparrow's writing is never condescending. It commands respect and attention, and because it's presented in manageable factboxes, even less fluent readers will be encouraged to read for meaning. Presented as a flight through the solar system (with a double page spread given to each of the planets and their moons), the Milky Way and then out beyond our galaxy, it is easy to navigate around.
A white typeface on black page backgrounds contributes to the book's striking impact.
This is a book that will be pored over for hours and is complex enough to provide several years of interest.
I can imagine an inquisitive child given this when he or she is eight years old still finding things to interest them when they are fourteen. Indeed, any adult seeing the book lying around is likely to pick the book up and find likewise.
Pleasingly free of flaps and fiddly bits.
Simply highly recommended.

This wonderfully well-written and assembled history of children's book publishing in America will prove indispensable to all those making a serious study of the genre, but is also fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in bookish affairs.

For me the most rivetting passages in the book fell within the first two-thirds. During the early history it was a joy to come across names familiar to me from the time when I did my research into the friendship between Melville and Hawthorne. This part of the book describes, for example, the first moves of librarians to separate out children's literature from the rest of the stock. As the story moves into the 1920s and 1930s Marcus is good at pointing out the degree to which children's literature had separated itself off from the main culture of modernism.

Several times during my reading I found myself wanting to turn to a few pages of illustrative plates giving portraits of some of the key players in this fascinating story. Margaret Wise Brown is described as "the charismatic ash-blond editor with film-star good looks" - it would have been helpful to be able to turn to a photo to corroborate this description :)

Marcus finds room for some fascinating detail regarding the editors who turned down Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War. The last two decades covered - the 1980s and 1990s - are given brushstroke treatment in comparison with the in-depth analysis accorded the earlier years, but that didn't bother me in the least.

Meticulously indexed and referenced, this is a work of high scholarship written for the general reader.

A big attention-grabbing title with Jeanne Willis's name underneath immediately put this picture book at the top of the waiting pile. The previous collaboration by this pair - Who's In The Loo? - won the Red House Picture Book Award and was overall winner of the Sheffield Children's Book Award. I'd be surprised if this had the same success. I found it rather disappointing. The repetitive narrative is formulaic and the punch-page, when it comes, left me feeling short-changed. The Scary Monster illustrations are great though.

So I've finally got round to reading Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks (now out in paperback).

Perhaps it was just me in the middle of being particularly negative, but I found Being, his first book for Penguin, a touch on the cold side. It was ambitious, different, page-turning, very good... but for me (at the time) it lacked that quintessential Brooks atmosphere that made those first few novels for Chicken House so memorable.

Black Rabbit Summer is back in the groove. Dialogue-driven but also occasionally poetic in its choice of epithet - 'soured silence' - Brooks' style is a joy. I cannot imagine his writing requires any sentence-level editing.

Brooks must remember his own adolescence well to be able to write about teenagers as he does. He remembers in particular how important terrain is. How young people have their own routes for getting from A to B. In particular, the off-road suburban terrain of footpaths, derelict areas, embankments, cut-throughs. He describes these so well. He writes about them as if he were still a 15-year-old himself, dashing through an alleyway.

He also remembers that for 15/16 year olds their 13/14 year old selves are an age away. There is emotional tension at the start of this book between the main character, Pete, and Nicole. They had been boy and girlfriend a couple of years ago, but not since. Meeting in a den before attending a local fairground the group of friends drink and smoke. The tension mounts.

Established early on is Pete's feeling for Raymond, a boy ostracised by everyone else. Raymond is a loner who spends much of his time out in the garden beside the hutch of his pet black rabbit.

Pete's father is a policeman and when people start to go missing following the night at the fair, Pete becomes both investigator and investigated. The second half of the novel is so well plotted and developed one hopes Penguin will have the sense to enter this book for a regular crime fiction award. It's a fantastic read, to be recommended for adoloscents and adults alike.

Marvin the sheep with the big appetite who made his first appearance in 'Marvin Wanted More' makes a second appearance in this picture book. Together with his friend Molly, Marvin happens upon a trees of big juicy apples. Despite the abundance of fruit that the tree is laden with, the very apple Marvin wants most lies tantalisingly out of reach.

Exhausted by his efforts and the patience he has exerted, Marvin falls asleep only to awaken and find that the apple has fallen and Molly is eating it. Transformed and enraged by his anger at this, Marvin sets outon a rampage stamping on flowers, knocking over chicken sheds, frightening ducks and even biting a cows tail - this is one angry, even-toed ungulate.

Amidst a fit of pique, the very grounds open beneath him and the silence, isolation and darkness lead him to consider the folly of his fury. Eventually rescued by Molly, he returns to the pastures where he beholds a fruit laden pear-tree only to discover the very apple he wants most lies tantalisingly out of reach...

Theobold's use of the docile sheep as the cantankerous protagonist heightens the humour of Marvin's rage in this witty book which explores the folly of irrational desires leading those who suffer temper tantrums to feel somewhat sheepish.

Generous helpings of monsters, mystery and the eponymous Mrs Muffly are baked together in this tasty treat of a picture book by monster maestro, Sarah Dyer. Warmth and affection belies the type of hearsay and hyperbolic assumption that lead to the conclusion that Mrs Muffly must be harbouring a monster at home! Alongside a deliciously different twist in the tale, the book introduces imaginative interpretation and concludes through the juxtaposition of these with a much more rational, though terrifically tempting explanation. A definite must read for those keen to develop ravenous readers.