Children: Picture books are the perfect way to brighten up winter for children, writes Niamh Sharkey
A child's first faltering steps towards independence are poignantly captured in many of this winter's titles. Martin Waddell's latest story Sleep Tight, Little Bear (Walker Books, £10.99) adds an eloquent coda to his Little Bear series. Barbara Firth's gentle and caring watercolour illustrations beautifully capture Little Bear's new adventure. Little Bear finds himself his own little-bear-sized cave, "with a bed and a table and a chair". When night falls he wants to sleep there. Firth's depiction of Big Bear as he plods back on his own brings a lump to the throat. A gem!
Emma Chichester Clark's Melrose and Croc (Harper Collins, £10.99) portrays the unlikely friendship between Melrose, a honey-coloured Labrador and Croc, a tiny crocodile. It's a heart-warming tale of how friendships can begin; sometimes it's no fun to be on your own, it's better to share magic moments with a new friend. This book is a wonderful tactile experience, from the shimmery glittery cover featuring Melrose and Croc ice-skating to the gentle watercolours inside, which are printed on the creamiest of papers.
Sink your teeth into Emily Gravett's original, tongue-in-cheek picture book Wolves (Macmillan, £10.99). Gravett's wry sense of humour comes across as she relates the story of a rabbit who borrows a book from his local library and gets a nasty surprise on reaching the end. The illustrations are an unusual blend of loose drawings and digital collage. Gravett's cheeky and clever debut has been shortlisted for this year's Nestlé Prize.
Oliver Jeffers's Lost and Found (Harper Collins, £10.99) is a charming, uplifting story of a boy's friendship with a penguin. The cover is printed on pearlised card and it gives the book a dream-like quality. Sparse graphic landscapes enchant the reader. This book should have a calming influence on rowdy bedtime travellers, though they may want to go searching for a penguin friend of their own. Jeffers, who lives and works in Belfast, has also been shortlisted for the Nestlé children's book prize in the five-and-under category.
Some parents have a hard time saying goodbye to their children and some children never want to leave the nest. Malachy Doyle's Big Pig (Simon and Schuster, £10.99) is too big to live in the farmhouse but every time John Henry tries to move him out he comes plodding and waddling back home. The language has a homely feel and a rise and fall cadence not unlike music. The watercolour illustrations by John Bendall-Brunello are sympathic and playful, but it's Doyle's lyrical voice that sings.
Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick's sun-drenched watercolours in Angela McAllister's Jasmine's Lion (Doubleday, £10.99) remind me of summer. It's the tale of a girl with a big imagination who believes there's a lion in her house. He's having a tea party, playing with her play-dough, painting, and even baking chocolate chip cookies. Fitzpatrick has used an eclectic range of angles to depict Jasmine. There are some wonderfully observed poses, such as Jasmine peeking in through the cat-flap. I recommend you read this on the coldest, dampest, wettest day of the month. It will remind you that the sun will come out again.
Christopher Wormell's Mice, Morals, & Monkey Business (Running Press, £12.99) has Wormell using linoleum-block prints to illustrate key moments from Aesop's Fables, highlighting the moral that is printed on the left-hand-side page. An appendix at the back contains the fables in their entirety and encourages parent-child interaction. It is refreshing to see the traditional use of block printing revived in this book. Wormell as a writer-illustrator has an impressive repertoire of styles.
Shirley Hughes's A Brush With The Past 1900-1950 - The Years that Changed Our Lives (The Bodley Head, £14.99) is a scrapbook of paintings, pen and ink drawings and memories of how ordinary people lived during these years. Gouache and chalk paintings are interspersed with details and snippets of what happened every second year. Adults and children love to pore over Hughes's illustrations, and she herself in the introduction invites us into her world - "The pictures in this book are merely a starting point. The stories are all yours." This is great advice for readers of any age.
This winter I encourage you to put on your most colourful scarf, and with a smile on your face, hop, skip and jump down to your local bookstore. Run home as fast as you can, and give the gift of a picture book to the little one in your life. Then watch as a smile spreads across even the frowniest little face.
Niamh Sharkey is an author and illustrator of children's picture books. Santasaurus (Walker Books) is out now in paperback