Slobbages and wampfish roes, courtesy of Dahl

If I compare my sons' childhood with my own, I don't think there is much that I envy them, but one thing that I would pick out would be their access to Roald Dahl's books. Reading them aloud when they were very young, I think I got as much enjoyment from them as they did, but very soon they were devouring them by themselves. I was surprised to discover that 'James and the Giant Peach' was first published in 1961, as I was not aware of it until at least twenty years later. I thought we had gone through the whole range of Dahl's novels, poetry books and autobiographies, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across a collection of his 'Songs and Verse', which does contain some previously unpublished material.

Having recognised Quentin Blake's delightful style of drawing on the front cover, I was initially disappointed to find that he has not illustrated the whole book. I needn't have been, as there is a fantastic variety of styles from the twenty-six artists who have contributed, including Babette Cole and Gerald Scarfe. Blake has written the foreword and has provided drawings for the opening of each section.

The anthology is divided into seven sections, the first of which is 'There are things to see and do'. This opens with 'The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me', a familiar one to most Dahl fans. Then comes 'The Centipede's Song' from 'James and the Giant Peach', where Dahl lets his imagination run riot over the centipede's diet:

'I often eat boiled slobbages. They're grand when served beside

Minced doodlebugs and curried slugs. And have you ever tried

Mosquitoes' toes and wampfish roes

Most delicately fried?'

It might be quite surprising that the second section is entitled 'Best behaviour', as not many of Dahl's characters behave particularly well. Examples are the Queen in 'Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs' and Goldilocks in 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', both taken from 'Revolting Rhymes'. Then comes 'Concerning Augustus Gloop', whom we all know from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory': well, he isn't exactly a paragon of virtue. I love the double page from 'Concerning Mike Teavee' where Posy Simmonds' depictions of a purple dragon, an orange elephant, Mr Toad and Squirrel Nutkin amongst others are interspersed with each four lines of verse.

The section ends with a previously unpublished poem, 'The Shark':

'He lay there gnawing, nibbling, munching,

Chewing, burping, grinning, crunching,

Until the whole of little Jim

Was pretty much inside of him.'

Be careful, dear parent, this is a bedtime story that might lead to nightmares.....

Section three deals with 'Unlikely creatures' and begins with 'The Grobes' from 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator', shown descending into the 'quelchy quaggy sogmire'. 'The Ant-Eater' from 'Dirty Beasts' looks quite cuddly but beware, looks are deceiving. 'The Tummy Beast', also from 'Dirty Beasts', describes a young boy who is convinced that there is someone in his tummy:

' “It's true!” I cried. “I swear it, mummy!

There is a person in my tummy!

He talks to me at night in bed,

He's always asking to be fed,” '

After quite a few more creatures, we reach the fourth section, 'Poisonous possibilities'. You will probably guess that 'George's Marvellous Medicine' features here, along with Goldie Pinklesweet from 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator', who lives to regret experimenting with Granny's laxatives:

'We're sure you do not wish to hear

About the hospital and where

They did a lot of horrid things

With stomach pumps and rubber rings.'

There is a lesson to be learned in that one.

In part five, 'Look who's here', we meet the Grand High Witch from 'The Witches', decreeing a punishment for a witch who dared to answer back:

'An idiotic vitch like you

Must rrroast upon the barbecue!'

Other delightful females included here are Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from 'James and the Giant Peach', the former trying to hide her fat tummy, the latter the pimple on her nose.

Part six entitled '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 pieces, two of which take us right back to Dahl's school days. He obviously developed a hatred of umpires whilst playing cricket:

'Out on the shining square there stands a man -

A mope-eyed sot, a gutless leprechaun,

White-coated, black at heart, Hell's sacristan!

I think all umpires should be shot at dawn!'

Equally hated was Mister Unsworth, who twisted boys' ears until they came right off and littered the floor.

I haven't mentioned every song or verse here, as there are forty-one in total, eleven of which have not been published before. The index lists the verses according to the novel or poetry book that they come from, ending with the unpublished pieces.

The illustrations are so diverse that it is difficult to decide which work best, and everyone will have a personal favourite. I love the Roly-Poly Bird in his jagged yellow tree by Emma Chichester Clark, and the craziness of Neal Layton's drawing for 'I'm Going Going Going'. Some will prefer the softer touch Alexis Deacon uses for 'The Nicest Creatures in the World' featuring James of Giant Peach fame. Then I'm attracted again by Emma Chichester Clark's double page spread for 'There's No Knowing What We Shall See' with its Pink-Spotted Scrunch and Biddy-Bright Hen. Babette Cole charms me in 'Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs' and Satoshi Kitamura brings a delightful oriental slant to the dentist's surgery in 'The Porcupine'. Gerald Scarfe's caricature of 'A Nobleman Visiting Coutts' is a masterpiece.

The poetry is zany, delightful, grotesque, fantastic in the true sense, and yes, sometimes a little scary. But there is nothing else quite like it – I don't think the world will ever have another Roald Dahl.

This is a beautiful book to read, to look at and to handle. The illustrations are all in colour, the font is a comfortable size, and the quality of the paper is excellent. It would make a wonderful present for any Roald Dahl lover who wants a book to treasure. I shall use it for reading practice with pupils having private tuition: they love the humour of 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)

The cleverest baby

If a children's book has won a major award that is judged by children, that's a sure sign that its target audience will love it. Such is the case with Simon James's 'Baby Brains', the overall winner of the Red House Children's Book Award in 2004. Subtitled 'The smartest baby in the whole world', the book's front cover shows a baby in a space suit space-walking against a bright blue sky speckled with silver stars and yellow dots. He's smiling inside his huge space helmet, and we know that he is no ordinary baby.

Turning through to the frontispiece, little Baby Brains is lying on the floor in his nappy, sucking a dummy, but there is an open book in front of him and two more to one side. They don't look like picture books, either – there are plenty of pages and plenty of text. This baby can read.

The story starts when Mrs Brains is several months pregnant, and she and her husband are doing everything they can think of to ensure that their baby will be a clever one: they turn the volume up when the television news is on, and Mrs Brains plays music and languages to her baby through headphones as well as reading to him before she goes to sleep at night.

Mrs Brains gives birth to a boy which she and her husband call Baby Brains. On their first night home, Mrs Brains lays him in his cot and tells him to sleep tight – it seems he does, too, as she is not woken by him during the night. What a lucky mum. The next morning, however, Mrs Brains is in for a shock when she finds Baby Brains sitting on the sofa, reading the newspaper. That afternoon he helps his father mend the car, and then announces that he would like to attend school the following day. Having amazed the children there, Baby Brains goes on to study medicine at university. It's only two weeks until he is working as a doctor at a hospital. Not long after that, he is invited to take part in a space mission.

Will Baby Brains continue to go from strength to strength, or will he suddenly feel that he wants to be an ordinary baby doing normal baby things, like being tickled and going out in his pram? Will Mr and Mrs Brains feel that they went too far in their quest for a clever baby and long just to bath and cuddle Baby Brains?

This is obviously a story that will delight children and no doubt amuse the adults that read it to them. It's very imaginative and full of humour. Adults will probably have a good chuckle at the lengths to which prospective parents will go to try to produce brainy offspring. Children will love the idea of a baby mending a car or going up into space.

Simon James has filled his story with colourful illustrations, perhaps slightly reminiscent of the style of Quentin Blake. Sometimes they almost fill the page, whereas others are smaller and interspersed with short paragraphs of text.

All the text is set against a white background and is large enough for easy reading. There are never more than four or five sentences to a page, sometimes less, so very young listeners will not get bored and be anxious to turn the page. Because there is such a good balance of text and illustrations, this could be a suitable book for young independent readers who are gaining confidence. They will not be put off by long paragraphs but will be encouraged by visual clues. There are a few difficult words such as 'languages', 'photographers' or 'headphones', but on the whole a five- or six-year-old could get a great deal of enjoyment from tackling this story.

I borrowed the paperback edition from the library and found a page of stickers (intact) at the end of the book. There are nine in all, depicting Baby Brains undertaking various activities such as talking on the phone, sitting at a laptop, or space walking. Each has a slogan, ranging from “I want my Mummy' through 'I love school' to 'stupendous'. I suspect they help to sell the book.

I do definitely recommend this as both as an entertaining read-aloud book for children aged three to five, and as a story for young independent readers. Although I wouldn't choose it as my favourite picture book, I can see the attraction for children imagining a baby who can turn his hand to almost anything that takes his fancy.

The only other book by Simon James that I am familiar with is 'Leon and Bob', a Smarties Book Prize Silver Award Winner which I enjoyed immensely. Amongst his other titles is 'Days Like This', which was short-listed for the Kate Greenaway Medal. There is apparently a sequel to 'Baby Brains' entitled 'Baby Brains Superstar', so I must keep an eye out for that.

Baby Brains

by Simon James

Walker Books, 2005

Paperback, 32 pages

ISBN 1844285227

Price £5.99 (Amazon £4.49)

A few of the best

If a love of books is instilled in our children by reading aloud to them at an early age and then sharing books and listening to them read as they begin to learn, let's hope that books will still be a pleasurable source of entertainment for them alongside television, computers and games consoles as they grow older. I have chosen several authors here and focused in most cases on a particular book as an example of that author's work; each author writes for a certain age group, ranging from three- to four-year-olds through to early teenagers. Let's start with the youngest group.

BABETTE COLE

Young children will love the humor and colorful, lively illustrations of Babette Cole's 'The Trouble with Grandad'. Grandad gets into a pickle because of the enormous vegetables he grows: he wins all the prizes at the Vegetable Show and makes other competitors jealous. When a rival gives him a tomato plant that becomes taller than the police station, Grandad is put in prison for growing a dangerous vegetable. All attempts to destroy it fail, so Grandad is released to see if he can solve the problem himself. He discovers that an enormous caterpillar is hidden inside it, which emerges and devours the tomato. When the prisoners decide to escape, they are so frightened of the caterpillar that they run back into jail. The caterpillar turns into a chrysalis and crashes into the police station. Grandad and grandson manage to escape the wrath of the chasing policemen by flying off on the back a a giant moth that emerges from the chrysalis. On returning to his allotment, Grandad hollows out a huge cucumber complete with windows and a clock tower, presenting it as a new police station. The police are delighted, but they have to protect their station from marauding giant slugs.

There is plenty of fantasy and humor here to delight young readers, and illustrations fill the greater part of each page. I find the one of the huge caterpillar happily sleeping on the roof of the police station particularly attractive. If children enjoy this story, there are others in the series such as 'The Trouble with Mum', who is in fact a witch.

FRANCESCA SIMON

Once children become independent readers, there are few who will not appreciate the tales of Horrid Henry by Francesca Simon. Henry is the bane of his parents' life: he throws food, squashes pet beetles, and steals tent pegs to make a camp fire. His brother Peter is the exact opposite of him. When Henry decides to be the perfect angel for a change one day, Peter is so annoyed that Henry isn't being his usual self that he eventually picks up his plate of food to throw at Henry. He misses, and his dinner lands on top of Mum's head instead. Henry finds it hilarious and doesn't even mind being sent to his room for laughing.

This is another series of books with comical illustrations, this time in the form of black and white drawings by Tony Ross. We see caricatures of pirates and ballerinas, or Henry and his neighbor Moody Margaret mixing up a concoction of Glop. The first book in the series includes a story of Henry's dance class as well as his camping holiday. Other titles in the series include 'Horrid Henry Tricks the Tooth Fairy' and 'Horrid Henry and the Mummy's Curse'. There are enough female characters in the stories to encourage girls to read, as if they are likely to need much encouragement when the tales are ridiculously funny.

ROALD DAHL

By the time a child has finished with Horrid Henry, they will be old enough to discover the delights of Roald Dahl's novels. The perfect one to begin with, as it is not overly long, is 'The Magic Finger'.

The heroine is a girl who can zap people with her finger with drastic results: her teacher may have regretted calling her stupid, as she grows whiskers and a tail after the finger is turned on her.

Worse still is the fate of the Gregg family, caught shooting deer and ducks by the girl. She is so incensed that she puts the Magic Finger on them. The following morning, Mr and Mrs Gregg and their two sons have dwindled in size and grown wings. They have to spend the stormy night in a nest, as enormous ducks take over their house. Only when the ducks threaten to shoot the Greggs do they have the chance to return to their normal selves by promising never to shoot birds or deer again.

A child who enjoys 'The Magic Finger' will almost certainly delight in another of Dahl's novels, 'Matilda', once again centring on a girl with magic powers. Follow this book with 'The BFG', a tale of a Big Friendly Giant, or 'George's Marvellous Medicine'. Humor in 'The Twits' is taken to the somewhat vulgar extreme; for something more serious, try Dahl's 'Danny the Champion of the World'. Illustrations again form an important part of these books, and are almost always by the amazing Quentin Blake, who captures the essence of Dahl with his line drawings and caricatures. These stories will keep children absorbed for hours on end.

TERRY PRATCHETT

For children aged nine to twelve, Terry Pratchett's 'Only You can Save Mankind' is the story of Johnny Maxwell who has an unexpected experience whilst playing a computer game. My younger son, when at the top end of this age group, was a reluctant reader, but when he discovered Terry Pratchett's novels, all that changed. Other Terry Pratchett novels that will appeal to children of this age are 'Johnny and the Bomb', in which Johnny Maxwell becomes a time traveler; 'The Carpet People', a fantasy first written when the author was only seventeen; and 'Truckers', the first of a trilogy about little people called nomes who are searching for a new home. The books are full of humor and highly imaginative.

ANTHONY HOROWITZ

Young teenagers, especially boys, are almost certain to enjoy Anthony Horowitz's series of novels that center on the hero, Alex Rider. The plotlines are very detailed and full of tension, involved as they are in the world of espionage. The first in the series is entitled 'Stormbreaker', in which Alex is recruited by M16; it is both thrilling and fun to read. Female characters are sadly lacking, however, so the series may not appeal to the majority of girls.

FRANCES RIDLEY

If, however, your young teenage son is still struggling with reading (and this is not uncommon), I would suggest Frances Ridley's 'Download' series, published by Rising Stars. Each book focuses on a topic such as motocross, mountain climbing or racing cars, so a book can be chosen that will tie in with a young teenager's interests. Ridley presents information in a magazine-style layout, using relatively easy vocabulary alongside colorful illustrations; a short story is also included in each one. The books can also appeal to younger, more confident readers who have particular interests in the topics in this series.

There are of course many other authors such as J. K. Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson and Philip Pullman that will appeal to children. I have perhaps concentrated here on books that contain a strong element of humor (with the exception of Horowitz and Ridley), as this is likely to encourage reluctant readers. The books by Cole, Simon, Dahl and Ridley also feature excellent drawings or colorful illustrations that play a large part in helping less confident readers to follow the text. If your child is not a natural bookworm, share the books with them and read aloud; you might be surprised how much enjoyment an adult can find here too.