The Best Chip

Author and Illustrator: Kate Leake
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books, 2006

This is one of my favourite books of all time, and quite possibly  #myinheritancebook. If you like modern poetry or even rap, this is the picture book for you. The rhyme is sublime!  It's fast, fun, tells a fantastic story and covers all manner of emotions (exhilaration, excitement, trepidation, sorrow); it's dynamic and comedic, all in one. 

The story rhyme tells the story of a little girl and her family standing in the queue at the fish and chip shop, then being served their chips, and the little girl savouring their taste, their look and their feel and then dropping her favourite chip in the floor. It looks like certain disaster, but the little girl soon recovers when she's served her other favourite food, ice-cream! 

Kate Leake works mastery over words in this book, it's a huge pleasure to read aloud, it rolls from the tongue. She uses alliteration on the 'ch' sound in the opening few pages, which are soft and lyrical. This sense of hysteria around the ' whopper' chip starts to build mid way through, as we're lead through excitement in the first person by the anticipating girl. The pages are laid out in a fun, engaging manner, comic book-like with capitalisation at random 'impact' moments, words in bubbles and sentences scattered uncouthly around the page, the the reader is forced to work hard for the best read, and I like this. 

In terms of the illustrations, again the lay-out and scale of pictures differ on each page and are stimulating on the eye. The children love trying to follow the read with their fingers, but I read this book so much,  they can't keen up, and it becomes even more fun and frantic in terms of reading and chip eating. 

The book works well if you put a touch of performance in, over playing the loss of the bestest chip, with dramatic sobs. Children from 2-7 years love having this read to them. My only very minor criticisms of the book; there's a lot of mild yellow in the pictures, so not so eye catching, and I sometimes feel it's a page too long ( but mainly only if the 'performance' is especially dramatic!- phew, exhausting!) 

All in all, a really lovely book for sharing with all the family. 

One Lonely Fish

Concept and Design: Andy Mansfield
Illustrations: Thomas Flintham
Publisher: Templar Publishing, 2016

The full title of this book is: One Lonely Fish: A counting book with bite. It's one of my current favourite books for toddlers, and works especially well for those approaching or a few months following the age of 1, with a very straightforward concept (count-the-fish) and pages that can be easily turned by small hands.  

Counting gradually up from 1-10, on each page the landscape length on the book gains a new colourful fish, with its jaws wide open, enough to swallow up the fish ahead. This forms a neat queue (or chasing line) of fish until one giant fish eats the lot (broad smile on his face). Snap! The end. 

Following on from reading (though it feels more like playing with this book, rather than reading it), we've used the book to discuss why fish number ten might be lonely, and with older children, you might even get a chat about the food chain out of this this title. 
In terms of age range though, this is an exceptionally toddler-friendly book, as the pages are easy to turn with inverted triangle card cut-aways on each page for added 'turn-ability', and the pages are made of tough thick cardboard. It's a big robust book (a bit too big for standard bookshelves actually, so do think about finding accommodation for it elsewhere in a nursery bedroom). The fish illustrations are bright, predominately in primary colours, and the big jaws perspective on the final fish is playful. My three year old loves 'reading' this to her younger brother, and spotting the red crab on each page too. There's extra fun to be had if children dare put their own hand in the fish's mouth, and it bites shut. Lots of squeals of delight in my house from this book in that biting-hand off respect. 

One Lonely Fish feels a little like a hybrid between to Rob Campbell's 1996 Fishy Things and Rod Campbell's 2005 Touch and Feel I won't Bite. If you like both these titles you'll love One Lonely Fish too. 

And if you enjoy counting books with toddlers I also recommend this video of the band Feist singing 'counting to 4' on Sesame Street, uploaded to YouTube in 2008. My children love this rendition, but be warned, it's very catchy: Feist: Counting to Four video