Wait a minute, wait a minute! Didn't you guys quit? Well yes we did but we had one more piece of unfinished business to attend to before we properly shut the shutters, closed the doors, locked the locks and sailed off into the sunset and waved goodbye to what was a pretty awful year for most people.  BUT that's not to say it was a year when books took a downward turn, and though we only reviewed books up till early August, we've hauled out all our 2020 Book of the Week winners for one more airing, just to show you how many truly excellent books crossed our paths, and hopefully to ..read more

Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Probably had a pretty good library... So here we are then. 12th August, ten years (and a day) since we began our book blogging journey, armed with little more than a Blogger account and an armful of picture books from our local library. It's been an amazing journey, and one that has surprised all of us here at ReadItDaddy Towers with the places it's taken us, the wonderful people we've met through book blogging, and the truly lovely community that exists around a love of children's books. We've spent 100 days looking back at just some of the stu ..read more

Looking through our bookshelves, it's clear that one type of book is almost in danger of completely taking over. They're usually thick weighty hardback tomes, filled to the brim with delights a-plenty, they're books that are read and re-read again and again, and they are books that are definitely keepers - in fact some of them predate our blog by a considerable number of years. Art process books, such as the gorgeous "The Art of Zootopia" pictured to the left (or "Zootropolis" if you're over here in the UK) are always pretty expensive, but utterly luxurious - like trading up your Arctic Roll ..read more

As we enter the final week of our blog, we wanted to review the heck out of a book that offers a quirky, sometimes rather eccentric view of something that we - in lockdown over the last few months - have been dying to do for ages. Thankfully as the lockdown rules are eased, and the hordes of ruinous barbarians who have dumped litter all over our green spaces have instead retreated to the shops and pubs that have reopened instead, we can finally return to a few of our favourite woodland haunts. "100 things to do in a forest" by Jennifer Davis, with beautiful illustrations from Eleanor Taylor ..read more

One thing we've noticed in ten years of book blogging is that huge success, and becoming a best-selling author also sometimes means that a particular author will end up being placed in the dock, accused of market saturation - their success almost being used against them as a blunt instrument to point out all the things that are wrong with the children's publishing industry. I think Julia Donaldson has had her fair share of flak over the years, placed firmly in the centre of this over-critical vortex of ill feeling from other authors who feel that her books are often used as the default in an ..read more

As our #Booky100Keepers list nearly draws to a close, I had to cast eyes back over the entire list to make sure I hadn't already featured this one. Any children's book list of recommendations will have certain books that folk will firmly get behind, and "We're going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury seems to have escaped the usual "We love it / we hate it now / we love it again / no we definitely hate it now and it's not cool any more" thing that book folk go through from time to time with beloved children's titles. But let's face it, this book bounces along, it has an ente ..read more

I think it's fair to say that this fantastic joy-filled book series, showcasing kindness and a love of animals, was the first series C became a superfan of. Prolific and hugely talented author Paula Harrison wrote the fantastic "Rescue Princesses", with a fab collection of positive stories with mighty girls at their heart, each with their own special abilities and affinity for particular animals. We were lucky enough to meet Paula fairly early on in our blogging career and she's just wonderful to talk to, and fully engaged with C - probably made her a bit star-struck if we're honest. C coll ..read more

Magic! As a kid I was obsessed with magic, always asking for magic sets and always closely scrutinising magic shows that would appear on TV (why oh why have these died out? It's such a huge shame). I've also passed on this love of magic to my daughter so imagine our delight when this book showed up for review. We absolutely had to squeeze it onto our blog in our hallowed "Book of the Week" slot, as it's something quite special and quite unique. It's not going to give away any secrets, that really isn't something the "Magic Circle" would want, but it's a superb historical delve into the root ..read more

Oozing with talent from every pore, and a pair of creative geniuses who do something that you seldom see in the world of children's publishing or illustration - paying their awesome success forward by helping others with an awesome creative blog and sizzling set of tutorials. What more can you say about Robin and Lorenzo Etherington, long-time contributors to the mighty Phoenix Comic (which we've already covered in our #Booky100Keepers list), and creators of many books that are almost set up in a mini-shrine on our shelves. Lorenzo's truly fantastic "How to Think when you Draw" and Robin's ..read more

On the bittersweet occasion of our last Picture Books of the Week we wanted to share a book filled with giggles, with joy and of course with our favourite subject - yummy scrummy food! "Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast: Short and Sweet" is the fourth book in the series from awesome creatives Josh Funk and Brendan Kearney, and this time the two heroes aren't quite feeling themselves. In fact, with a bit of foodie magic Lady and Frenchy have been transformed into mere shadows of their former selves, turning back into the cutest pair of kids you've ever seen this side of the fridge door. Pro ..read more