Sam's Sandwich

 

I thought I that I might go back to a book that was one of my favourites when I was a child. Sam’s Sandwich is a fun and exciting novelty book that contains lots of grizzly surprises hidden under food shaped flaps. This fantastic book only recently came back into print and I have been so pleased to see it out on bookshelves for children to enjoy once more.

 

 

Meet Sam and his sister Samantha. They are both starving hungry and looking to make a delicious sandwich. They get together a whole larder worth of ingredients and begin to compile their spectacular feast. Sam however, has other plans. Within each layer of the sandwich he hides a disgusting creepy crawly. Once they have completed their masterpiece Sam very nobly tells his sister that actually he is not at all hungry and she can have the whole sandwich to herself.

 

 

David Pelham has created a memorable and unique book with Sam’s Sandwich. I often remember speaking about this book with my sister and friends growing up, often saying “Remember how great that book was?!” When Walker bought it back into print I was so excited, and it seems so were many of the general public. I had quite a few adults coming in to our shop and asking for copies of this book for them to read to their children . Sam’s Sandwich is a wonderful, nostalgic book that should never be forgotten.  It is such a joy to read and squirm at all over again!

Oi Frog!

 

Oi Frog! is undeniably super cool and very funny! Oi Frog! starts with a rather bossy cat telling a frog that he must sit on a log. The frog protests and complains “But I don’t want to sit on a log, logs are nobbly and uncomfortable. And they can give you splinters in your bottom” to which the cat replies “I don’t care, you’re a frog so you must sit on a log”. This starts the whole chain of the rest of the hilarious book.  Before we know it we are being told that lions sit on irons and fleas sit on peas. It ends with the poor frog asking the cat what do dogs sit on, to which we see a rather uncomfortable looking frog being sat on by a dog on the last page.

  

Jim Field’s illustrations in Oi Frog are fantastic. I found myself laughing four or five times whilst reading. I particularly liked his illustrations of “apes sit on grapes”. My favourite thing about the artwork in this book is how spot on the facial expressions are on each of the animal. The frog, throughout looks rather worried and perplexed whilst all the other animals have their own individual expression depending on what they are doing.

 

Lastly the wording is so much fun that you could play around with it all day. It works very well as a memory game for kids to remember what certain animals sit on. “What do puffins sit on?” “Why of course muffins!” You could also chop and change the order you read the middle of this book to keep it exciting and have children remembering where animals are supposed to sit in different orders. All in all this is a bright, catchy, laugh out loud picture book. I loved it.

The High Street

The High Street by Alice Melvin is a beautifully illustrated, fun and catchy tale about a little girl's visit to the shops and everything she has to remember to buy. The young girl has a rather long list of things to remember to buy and is only able to get these things from separate shops. On every page her rhyming shopping list becomes shorter and shorter until she only has a yellow rose left to buy. When she enters the last shop to buy her yellow rose, they have sold out! The young girl sadly leaves the shop to take the long walk home when she stumbles upon a garden packed full of yellow roses.

The layout of this book is brilliant. I love that every page has a flap that you can lift so you can see into all of the various shops on the high street. The rhyming shopping list is also a fantastic aspect of the book as you find yourself joining in with all the things the little girl needs to buy. Melvin’s illustrations are also completely stunning, simple and very pretty. This quirky little picture book is fabulous and fun from the very start.