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A World of Houses and Habitats | Learn how humans have built dwellings to suit all kinds of habitats. Adapting themselves to all kinds of landscapes and climates, over the centuries humans have used their architectural ingeniousness to build amazing dwellings: find them here, from houses on stilts and igloos to tree houses and skyscrapers. Fully illustrated with clear, engaging artwork and intelligent, simple and original text presented in a clean, appealing design.
From boats and trucks to trains, limousines and hot air balloons, explore a huge range of different ways to travel in this charming board book. With peep-through holes throughout, there's a fun surprise on every page. Part of an original and exciting new series of board books with bright and bold illustrations.
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A greedy pig gets his comeuppance in this very funny and beautifully told picture book, but there are useful life lessons for us all. Pig has come into some gold and decides he needs a house. He strikes a deal with some builders - a cat, a dog and a hen - and they duly build him a very nice house. Overseeing their efforts from the comfort of his deckchair though, he decides it’s not big enough and gets the team to add an extension, more rooms, more floors. Things come to a head when they come for their payment, and Pig learns why it’s best to be totally honest in your business dealings! The story builds to a wonderful conclusion and everyone will enjoy seeing Pig get his just deserts. Katie Cotton’s rhyming text is a joy to read aloud and Tor Freeman’s illustrations are full of character and extra treats for readers (especially those fascinated by building sites!).
Of course you shouldn’t call an elephant in an emergency, he’ll just tangle the fire hoses and cause a flood. Don’t let lemmings fly the rescue helicopter either, or rely on an anteater for a cave rescue (he’ll disgrace himself). These are just some of the ridiculous scenarios dreamed up by Patricia Cleveland-Peck in the latest in this hilarious picture book series, illustrations by David Tazzyman, his scribbly detail catching all the chaos and possibilities of the action. It’s great to read aloud and the action builds to a perfect, and perfectly funny conclusion. Peck and Tazzyman are the consummate picture book partnerships and each double-page is an brilliant adventure in its own right.
There’s an infectious enthusiasm about this book that will inspire every reader to look around their local train station with new eyes, or to take train trips specially to explore other lines and destinations. Author Vicki Pipe, ably assisted by Geoff Marshall (look out for Geoff’s Fun Facts text boxes – they’re irresistible), identifies fifty fascinating things to see and discover across the railways of England, Scotland and Wales and they range from tunnels, viaducts and lists of the smallest stations, to trees, railway pets and the people who keep the whole system moving. You get a great sense of the history of train travel in the UK and exciting glimpses into the future. A fact-filled information book compiled by people with a passion to match their knowledge.
Millions of people use the underground in London every day, but how many of them know the secrets and facts revealed in this fascinating book? Did you know, for example, that you could walk for fifteen minutes through the corridors at Bank station without going over the same steps? Or that there are 49 – 49! – abandoned and disused stations? Or that you can walk between some stations faster than the train? It concludes with various tube challenges, including the ultimate: visit all 270 stations in one day. The record for that is fifteen hours, forty-five minutes and thirty-eight seconds apparently ... All this plus underground history and peeks into the future. A quirky and unputdownable guide to the lines beneath our feet.
February 2020 Book of the Month | Small person in the family with a fondness for vehicles? They will love this book! Though there’s no real story as such, it’s action-packed, every page crammed with brightly coloured vehicles going about their business on equally bright backgrounds, a friendly animal character at the wheel. ‘Which bus would you catch?’ asks the first spread, which presents us with ten different buses to admire; ‘which truck would you drive?’ comes a bit further on. Trains, trucks, tractors, bicycles, boats, diggers, rockets, cars and emergency vehicles all get their moment in the spotlight, with questions and challenges on each page as well as speech bubbles, jokes and descriptions to read out. Bright, busy and so much fun, this will keep littles ones absorbed for hours. Fans of this will also enjoy William Bee’s equally bright and distinctive Wonderful World of series.
Whether you travel on the London Underground every week (as millions do) or just once in a blue moon, this fascinating and beautifully illustrated book will intrigue you. It seamlessly mixes facts and human stories to explain the history of the tube from 1845, when Charles Pearson proposed an ‘Arcade Railway’ to cope with congestion on the roads, to today when 100 million people travel through Waterloo station alone every year. You’ll meet the people whose vision shaped the trains, their lines and the stations, and learn quirky facts about everything from lost property to ‘Mind the Gap’ announcements. Sarah McMenemy’s pen and ink illustrations are equally atmospheric whether representing passengers in Victorian times or today, and David Long, a Blue Peter Prize winner, knows just how to entertain and inform at the same time.
Irresistible for anyone mad about trucks! There’s so much to learn about the extraordinary world of trucks and truck-mad William Bee is the man to explain it all. There are steam trucks, amphibious trucks, rescue trucks, snow plough trucks, fire engine trucks and much, much more. Gloriously bold illustrations celebrate the wonders of trucks while the texts adds some useful details.
This fun book is a playful way for young children to develop their counting, observation and pen control skills. Spot the differences between tower cranes, join the dots to finish building a house, count bricks and lots more. Durable, wipe-clean pages mean children can revisit their favourite activities again and again.
While other children are busy creating castles and shops for their school project Yasmin, the lively heroine of this vibrant and attractive series, cannot think what to do. A creative block that will resonate with readers who find it hard to get started on a task. But then she realises that by creating pavements and bridges she brings the buildings together and during break time she creates a community for the whole class. The text is Book Banded Turquoise and with the quirky inclusive illustrations will be confidence building for emergent readers. Yasmin and her family come from Pakistan, so we have occasional Urdu words used and explained and a light touch introduction to Pakistan and its culture. There are discussion questions, author and illustrator biographies and finally, instructions are given for building a model castle needing only cardboard, scissors and glue , usefully modelling instructional text The sparky protagonist, Yasmin also features as a painter, explorer and fashion model in this highly recommended series.
Amelia Earhart, written by Isabel Thomas and illustrated by Dàlia Adillon is a charmingly illustrated biography of an aviation pioneer. The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Amelia Earhart was a superstar of aviation in the 1920s and ‘30s and a pioneer of women’s rights. Her disappearance in 1937, while attempting to fly around the world, remains an unsolved mystery.
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