Let's Play edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D'Arcy

Poems about Sports and Games from around the world
Illustrated by Shirin Adl

Review by The Mole

This bright book with it's many lovely illustrations is more about poetry than pictures. And, as the title suggests, they have one thing in common - games. Today we are encouraged to do active sports, but that's not for everyone and this collection covers baseball and football but also running and swimming, chess and scrabble, surfing and skateboarding - even computer games get a mention.

Many poems are describing the aspirations of the game or competition but some are just for fun. The poets selected come from around the world with some older poems from the likes of John Masefield and many ones such as Wes Magee and the editors of the anthology. The poems types vary tremendously from simple rhyme to blank verse, a Haiku and a shape poem. In some cases they are just short sections lifted from longer poems.

There really is poetry for everyone in this collection that is packaged for children but fun for everyone.

In the back is a list of all the sports mentioned and a brief resumé of them.   

A really lovely book that will delight.

Publisher - Frances Lincoln
Genre -children's poetry book

The Book of Dreams by Shirin Adl

Review by The Mole

The pages tell of the many different types of dreams that people have from the very simple dreams to the the more story-like, the plain silly, the aspirational and tries to put them all, even the scary ones, in the context of JUST dreams.

Each page is an explosion of colour with the words clear and fun. Many of the pictures originated as mixed media before becoming book pages and so will also give children ideas on how to make pictures for themselves. Also, as in dreams, many of the characters are not at all realistic but show that art doesn't have to be lifelike to be fun and entertaining.

An extremely nice book for children that can be used for bedtime reading, or perhaps opened to get them back to sleep again after a 'bad' dream or simply to be used to give ideas about how to make their own art.

Publisher - Frances Lincoln
Genre - Children's, picture book, 

Buy The Book of Dreams from Amazon