My brain is turning into pink blancmange

Here's a plea to the grandparents: when your heart thrills with the thought of your granddaughter's little face when she sees the fabulously pink and sparkly bag of books you've given her for her birthday, spare a thought for your own poor child.

Did you really spend all that time and money on the very best education so that the fruit of your loins could read, night in, night out, the moralising adventures of Princess Poppy?

Argh, they are so sweet my teeth hurt to read them: Poppy and Saffron and Honey, and their adventures in Honeypot hill (or something, I may be misremembering and I can't bear to look at it again tonight to check).

I admit, I would have loved them when I was little a's age. The illustrations are sweetly pretty, they have engaging little letters in real envelopes at the front, and they do attempt to teach something of the ways of the world.

But do they stand up to being read again and again interminably for the whole of the month of January?

No, they do not.

Although little a's birthday was only on the 20th. That was a week ago. Has it really only been a week? She's threatening to take them on our half term holiday. I fear I will be lacking in new material for this blog for some time to come.

Time to bring in some Horrid Henry or Roald Dahl, because if my brain is turning to pink blancmange, what good can it be doing to the precious daughter?

Slightly Invisible

oooh oooh ooh there's a new Charlie and Lola! a real one - not one of the TV spin-offs but a real proper Lauren Child wrote the story and did the pictures one.

That, together with my sister giving little a the Lauren Child illustrated edition of Pippi Longstocking for Christmas, means we're starting 2011 on a reading high.

True, I may not have been this excited had I not been forced to read Just for You Blue Kangaroo every night for the past three weeks (thank goodness for Twelfth Night and the loft. That's twelfth night the last day of Christmas, not the Shakespeare play. I know I'm middle class, but I'm not that pushy. Yet)

So, back to Slightly Invisible. As you can tell, we're big Charlie & Lola fans in this house. I have a friend who won't read them because of the bad grammar, which gave me about a milisecond's pause for thought before I remembered reading Enid Blyton never did me any harm. I mean I work in publishing now, so my grammar must be fine isn't it?

Little a took the appearance of a new Charlie & Lola in her stride (I love that acceptance that the world is of course filled with magical things that come to you at regular intervals. When does that wear off? How can I get it back?). I think it might be my favourite one yet, but ask me again after I've read it 200 times ... And at the risk of going all publishing on you, it's got much more of a narrative arc than the previous books somehow, less full of cute phrases and a bit more grownup-feeling.

We liked spotting Soren Lorensen hidden in shiny varnish on each page.

Probably not a starter Charlie & Lola, I'd say, but if like us you've grown up with them over the past five years, it's a very very welcome new addition to our collection of favourites.

PS I'd better confess my interest here: I work for a sister company of Orchard books - but this is the first of their books I've knowingly reviewed here. In fact, such a fool am I that I had bought all the previous C&L books before I even realised the original Lauren Childs are published by Orchard. Hey ho, it keeps us all going I guess ...