Children's Books > R Children's Books > 5 GBP to 9 GBP

Advantages: Some previously unpublished poems
Disadvantages: No music for the songs

...'All together now' brings us songs from the Giraffe, the Pelican, and the Oompa-Loompas amongst others. There is a rather menacing start in 'Crocodile Rhymes' from 'The Enormous Crocodile': 'The sort of things that I 'm going to eat Have fingers, toe-nails, arms and legs and feet!' This is another one that might scare the youngest members of the family. The seventh and final section is 'And a few surprises' and contains five previously unpublished ...
...Dahl, and this superior quality of book with delightful pictures should whet any child's appetite. We can occasionally offer something better than a paperback! Songs and Verse by Roald Dahl Published by Jonathan Cape, London 192 pages ISBN 0 224 07038 X Price £14.99 Hardback (Amazon £9.89) ... Read review

Advantages: Very funny, lovely illustrations
Disadvantages: None

..."nit picking") and smiled at the puzzlement or amusement of those around, then you will chuckle (and sometimes even laugh out load) at this comic tale from children's writer Roald Dahl. The story is about the Reverend Lee. However, this young vicar's problem is not Spoonerisms exactly. Instead he suffers from a very special form of verbal dyslexia, which causes him to unknowingly speak some words as if they had been written in reverse, for example, ...
...funny situations. The clergyman is newly arrived in Nibbleswicke and it seems the stress of his new position has awoken this condition. Sometimes everyday words when reversed can confer on a simple sentence a new and even rude meaning, and these are especially hilarious when spoken innocently by a man of the cloth. His parishioners experience both alarm and bemusement at his condition, and yet they begin to warm to his eccentricity. It is the local ... Read review

Advantages: See text..
Disadvantages: See text.

...a collection of short stories. The name of it is The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, and was published by Penguin (well mine is anyway). It was priced at £6.99, but if you look around then no doubt you will find it for a lot less (I did, for 50p in a charity shop!). The ISBN, for those of you would wantit is 0-14-005773-0. But now to the main part of the book, and in my mind this is just pure Dahl through and through. No rubbish or anything ...
...a message beiing put through the undercurrent that makes you stop and think about what is actually being written about. Dahl once said I believe that adults will only read a book if they have been properly introduced to it as children, and that can only be done in a book that has been well written. OK so he said it better, but he certainly made reading a lot more interesting through some of his own works than a lot of others could ever do. The 7 ... Read review

Advantages: Great read, well written, realistic characters.
Disadvantages: Somewhat dated in a few respects, hard to get hold of nowadays.

I’m not sure why, but the other day, a word suddenly popped into my head – Diddakoi. I remembered it was the title of one of my favourite childhood books and was later made into a TV series called Kizzy. I’d owned the book, but it had somehow got lost as I’d grown up and moved house. I looked it up on Ebay and couldn’t find it there, but I did manage to buy it for literally a few pence from Amazon Marketplace! When ...
...the same one I’d had, with photos of Vanessa Furst (the actress who had played Kizzy in the TV series) on the front and back cover. Just looking at the pictures brought back happy memories and as I began to read, large chunks of the story came flooding back into my mind. I almost felt as though I was back living with my parents, reading late into the night if a book was good enough. I read this in a couple of days. I could have finished it ... Read review

Advantages: appeals to adults and children
Disadvantages: nothign

...Gervais goes on to list more flanimals in other families such as the Sprot Oggler and the Sprot Mungler. As with 'Flanimals' he gives a small account of the purpose of their completely pointless lives. Paragraphs are riddled with Gervais' humour, and at points some bizarre arguments with the reader, or himself (I'm not quite sure). All pages in this chapter are illustrated with Flanimals, with exception of the last page. The last page is slightly ...
...The last page goes into more biological areas such as DNA. However, it is still bursting with Gervais' personality and such entertain most people!! Flanimal Evolution: This is a very short chapter which shows diagrams of the flanimals which evolved from other flanimals. There is little text on these pages and the brightly coloured pictures may appeal to younger children. This chapter also shows some 'fossil evidence' and a large flanimal family ... Read review