There’s a wild, free-spirited energy running through this month’s picture books, one perhaps best encapsulated in Sara Ogilvie’s cover for The Zebra’s Great Escape by Katherine Rundell (Bloomsbury). A girl astride a zebra makes chase through the fields, her pigtails thrown back by the breeze, a squirrel hitched to her skirt, while a fang-toothed dog tries to keep up with the frenzied gallop. This unlikely quartet star in Rundell’s triumphant move into picture books. Having already wowed older readers with prize-winning middle-grade novels such as Rooftoppers, as well as adult nonfiction, here Rundell’s playful style is paired with the bright, bustling drawings of Ogilvie (who brought Julia Donaldson’s The Detective Dog so lovingly to life) to tell an intoxicating adventure.
“Mink did not believe in bedtimes,” we’re immediately told about the pigtailed girl. While evading sleep one evening, she finds herself accidentally knocked off a swing by a baby zebra who, by muzzling her on the head with his magical snout, somehow gives her the ability to “feel” what animals are saying. The zebra needs help. And so, in scenes reminiscent of the infant Frank hiding a whole zoo from his parents in Stephen Collins’s hilarious Baby’s First Bank Heist, Mink must smuggle the zebra into her bedroom to find out more. “Did you just… neigh?” Dad says as he leans in to say goodnight.
It transpires that the parents of the zebra have been stolen by an evil man called Mr Spit and so, with the help of an intrepid dog and squirrel, they set off on an unmissable journey to save them.
In The Boy Who Dreamed Dragons (Puffin), Albie, unlike Mink, loves going to bed because there his imagination can run free. Asleep, he conjures up all kinds of scaly creatures who then accompany him in his waking hours: from dainty fire dragons who brown his toast, to candle dragons who light his way home from school, all beautifully rendered by illustrator Carmen Saldaña. However, because nobody sees things quite the way Albie does, he struggles to make real friends until he meets a girl with her own special playmates. The first English-language picture book from the celebrated Welsh novelist and screenwriter Caryl Lewis, The Boy Who Dreamed Dragons is set in the present day but seems to hum with the history of Welsh legends.
The YA author Juno Dawson is also taking strides into a younger market with her witty, chatty take on gender and acceptance, You Need to Chill (Farshore). Sporting sparkly sunglasses and a no-nonsense attitude, Bill’s sister finds herself having to fend off constant questions from her classmates about where Bill has got to. Is he hiding? Is he ill? The truth is that Bill now identifies as Lily and, as her sister tells us in this lovely rhyming tale with illustrations by Laura Hughes, everyone needs to calm down about it.
A young chipmunk called Mino is also taking a big step in his life. The cute, Pikachu-like creature must leave his mother and make a new home for himself in Simona Ciraolo’s When Mino Took the Bus (Flying Eye). Ciraolo’s pastel-hued story finds Mino sharing the journey to the last bus stop with an array of fun animal characters and features fabulous woodland drawings.
Covid-themed children’s books tend to be a turn-off but The Cats Who Wanted More by Katie Sahota (Owlet) is a delectably villainous take on what our feline friends did when the humans all stayed home. Initially annoyed by the constant presence of their owners, the cats eventually deduce from them how to order food online. They hatch a plan to ensure an endless stream of salmon and steak for themselves while cutting off the food supply to the rodents. Though designed to be a tale about fighting back against greed, it’s Naomi Tipping’s sketchy illustrations of evil cats running riot on Zoom and getting their fat bums stuck in door flaps that steal the show.
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