Avocado Baby - John Burningham

Mr and Mrs Hargraves, as well as their son and daughter, are not the strongest specimens of the human race so they naturally hope the newest addition to the family will prove to be more robust. After the baby is born, however, Mrs Hargraves has a lot of difficulty feeding it and indeed finding any sort of food that it likes.

Poor Mrs Hargraves is eventually driven to tears, but her son and daughter notice an avocado pear in the fruit bowl and suggest their mother feed it to their baby brother. The mystery is that nobody knows how the avocado got there, as the Hargraves certainly hadn't bought it. In her desperation, however, Mrs Hargraves cuts it in half, mashes it up and feeds it to the baby. Since he eats it all, Mrs Hargraves continues to give him avocado pear every day. The baby soon becomes so strong that he is able to break out of his high chair and pull a cartload of children up a hill.

One night the baby hears a burglar in the house; he gets hold of a broom and chases the terrified burglar away. After that the baby helps with carrying shopping, moving furniture and pushing the family car with everyone in it. The baby is thankfully able to deal with two bullies who attack his brother and sister while they are walking him in the park. The baby simply picks them up and throws them into the pond. The story ends with a picture of the baby having a rest in his carry-cot and the news that he continues to get stronger eating avocado pears.

John Burningham's stories are generally rather unusual, and Avocado Baby does seem a little strange as a young children's book. There is, however, quite a bit a humour in the story, and young children will doubtless be delighted by the idea of a baby moving a piano or picking up a bully in each hand. Parents who have had problems feeding their children will appreciate Mrs Hargraves' desperation as well as her relief when her baby wolfs down that first avocado pear and then starts to become stronger by the day. It is good to see the older siblings playing their part too, and of course being protected by the astonishing baby.

Burningham illustrates his books himself, and all except one of the pictures here are in full colour. The backgrounds are almost all white, so there is no difficulty with reading the text. The colours used are bright and varied which I think is important in a young children's book. One page, where Mrs Hargraves is shown trying to feed the baby, is set out like a comic strip with a series of pictures. We see the baby angrily pushing the plate away, as well as Mrs Hargraves attempting to feed him in the bath and while he is standing up in his cot. She is at her wits' end and will try anything. This is a page with no text that could generate discussions about the various scenarios, considering the feeding problem from both the baby's and the mother's point of view. Favourite illustrations are likely to be the full-page one of the burglar dropping his swag bag when he sees the baby brandishing a broom behind him, or the double-page spread of the two bullies landing in the pond with an almighty splash that disturbs the poor ducks and a fish.

The endpapers at both the front and back of the book show a double-page spread of an avocado plant covered with miniature babies in various colourful outfits. Some are perched on leaves while others appear to be performing gymnastics. This is a delightful illustration and again could be an inspiration for a conversation about what the babies are doing.

The text is in a particularly large and clear font and is always on a white background. There are never more than eight lines on a single page, usually less, and sometimes the text is broken up into smaller sections with illustrations in between. This is of course a book that is intended to be read aloud to very young children, but because of the clarity and the lack of long passages of text, it might also be suitable for young independent readers.

I didn't find 'Avocado Baby' to be such an outstanding book as John Burningham's 'Cloudland', either visually or in terms of the story. The ending of 'Avocado Baby' is perhaps a bit of an anticlimax, as we are simply told that things carried on as they were. I would, however, definitely recommend this as a book to borrow from the library, and Amazon's current price of £3.94 seems a reasonable one. I don't know if any miraculously strong, avocado-eating babies have come about as a result of having this book read aloud, but I would recommend it as an unusual story that has a fair amount of humour that will appeal to most young children.

Avocado Baby

John Burningham

Paperback, 32 pages

Red Fox, 1994

ISBN 9780099200611

Price £5.99 (Amazon £3.94)

The Ghost Library - David Melling

I remember as a child how much my imagination was stimulated by C. S. Lewis's 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe': the idea of walking through the back of a wardrobe into a fantasy world where you met fauns and had to fight against a wicked Queen was enough to relieve the boredom of any school holiday. As my sons were growing up, it was the novels of Road Dahl that captured their imagination. Fancy being able to point your finger at people and turn them into birds, as the furious little girl in 'The Magic Finger' does. The idea of mixing up a glorious concoction to deal with a despicable person, as in 'George's Marvellous Medicine,' seems almost within your own reach.

Lewis and Dahl are still tremendously popular today, but what of younger children whose imagination needs stimulating? 'The Ghost Library' by David Melling seems to be just the answer.

Having been impressed by Melling's 'The Kiss that Missed' and used it successfully as the basis for a drama session with a group of four-year-olds, I asked if I might be the first to borrow his picture book 'The Ghost Library' when I spotted it amongst a pile of new books at my local library. The cover, which has 'glow-in-the-dark' appeal, shows three strange creatures peering down at a book that a little girl in dressing-gown and pyjamas is trying to read. It gives the impression that there will be plenty to stimulate the imagination inside.

Bo, the little girl on the cover, is reading her favourite book about a witch with smelly feet. It's bedtime, and the lights suddenly go out. Bo feels a hand grab her book, and before she knows it she and the book are jerked into the air. She soon finds herself in the ghost library, and the three ghosts from the front cover introduce themselves to her as Magpie, Twit and Puddle Mud. The ghosts explain that they wanted Bo's book, but she came too because she was holding it so tightly. Bo angrily accuses them of stealing, but they claim that they always give books back to children after they have read them. They ask Bo to read her book to them, and when she agrees ghosts fly out from all over the library to listen.

The ghosts enjoy Bo's book so much that they ask her for another story. She says it's their turn, but they protest that they don't know any stories. Bo says she will help them to make one up; they shout out their ideas, but they want Bo to tell the story because she is so good at doing different funny voices. After all the story-telling Bo eventually returns to her bedroom to find a little surprise on her pillow.

Melling's books are always so beautifully illustrated in a way that would appeal to any young child. Each of the ghosts is quite different from the next and most look very friendly rather than scary. One page opens upwards to show a tall tower with the ghosts and Bo swirling past in the night. There is a fair amount of text on many of the pages, so this is a book for reading aloud rather than one for independent young readers. Sometimes italics are used, and sometimes individual lines of text swirl around the page, in tune with the illustrations. All of this adds to the visual appeal.

The unusual thing about this book is that when Bo is reading her book to the ghosts or telling them a story, you see merely a series of pictures without any text. This is in fact an ingenious way of stimulating a young child's imagination and encouraging them to tell the story as they see it through the pictures. When Bo is reading her own book to the ghosts, the double-page spread shows around thirty-six small pictures, mostly in light blue on a yellow background. This would necessitate some quite detailed story-telling, and might be suitable for a child of six or seven. When Bo is telling the story that she and the ghosts have made up, however, there are two double-page spreads in comic-strip style with very colourful and bold pictures that a slightly younger child could follow and tell the story that the illustrations show.

This is a story that successfully combines fantasy with the reality of story-telling ideas. Although about ghosts, they are friendly ghosts and all ends happily, so it should not be too scary as a bedtime story. I would recommend this for children aged three up to either six or seven; with David Melling, I think it is hard to go wrong.

The Ghost Library

by David Melling

Hodder Children's Books, 2005

Paperback, 34 pages

ISBN 0340860898

Price £5.99 (Amazon £4.99)