Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld

Set against a cityscape backdrop, Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site tells the story of five tough trucks working on a big construction site. It is the end of a hard day's work and the reader gets to learn a little bit about each truck and the work they do before saying goodnight to each of them.

The story is told in delightful rhyming text. There are lots of action words used, which provides wonderful opportunity to engage little ones - Maximilian loves to "reach and stretch and lift" like Crane Truck and, of course, the repetitive Shh...goodnight is nice to say together with "shushing". The language used also makes this a great read aloud book, as it's fun to crrrunch the gravel along with Dump Truck and rooaaar along with Bulldozer.  Like all good bedtime stories, there are also lots of opportunities throughout the story for parent and child to enjoy some good cuddles!

Lichtenheld's illustrations are just magnificent and really are works of art. The trucks and diggers manage to be both cartoonish and realistic, and their faces are filled with such personality. There is also incredible detail in every picture, and I've been amazed by how many things Maximilian sees in the pictures that I've missed - there is one page with a little owl that he spots every time! As he gets older and his vocabulary grows, I'm sure he'll notice and articulate even more of the details in the pictures.

The bedtime detail in the pictures is also really charming - Crane Truck has a teddy bear and night light while Cement Mixer has a little blankie. The night sky with the lovely sleepy moon illustration is featured on each goodnight page and the twilight blue is really striking and unusual and very engaging - as are the illustrations of the trucks and diggers.

Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site is a wonderful book that will always hold a special place in our hearts, because this is the book that taught Maximilian about bedtime!

We chose very gentle bedtime techniques with our babies. As a small baby, we always cuddled Maximilian to sleep before putting him in his cradle or cot. As he grew bigger, we would cuddle him on our bed before transferring him to his own cot once he was fast asleep. But, as I got bigger and bigger when I was pregnant with Walther and as Walther's arrival grew closer and closer, it became impossible - I simply couldn't bend over his cot to lift his 12kg sleeping body in any more!! It was time to help Maximilian learn to go to sleep in his own bed. 

We tried lots of different things - putting him in his bed awake and sitting nearby singing songs or reading books, patting him off to sleep, etc. We had moderate success and things were going quite well. Then, one night when Walther was only a few weeks old, Daddy had to be out at night and Mummy needed to do bedtime by herself. I knew I didn't have very long before Walther would need feeding, so it had to be a pretty quick bedtime routine. I cuddled Maximilian up in my feeding chair and read him Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. As we said Shh...goodnight to each of the trucks in the book, Maximilian grew sleepier and sleepier. When we had finished the book, I carried him over to Walther's cot and he said Shh...goodnight to bubby, then Shh...goodnight to our parrots, then Shh...goodnight to ape (his favourite cuddly toy) etc. When I put him in his bed, I simply said Shh...goodnight Maximilian, tucked him in and left the room - and he went straight to sleep and didn't wake again until morning. It was magical! And it was the same night after night - the bedtime ritual and routine that this book gave us worked like a dream and we haven't looked back since.

Maximilian received Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site as a gift for his first Christmas. We fell in love with the beautiful artwork and delightful rhyming text immediately and tried reading it to him when he was a few months old. It is quite a long story though and didn't immediately catch his interest. We tried again a few months later and made it through a few of the trucks in the book, but it wasn't until he was around 14 months old that he started to really enjoy this book and sit through the whole story. Once this happened though, Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site was a firm favourite and the only book he wanted to read for several weeks!!

I really can't recommend this book highly enough. Great for any little person interested in trucks, diggers and construction equipment. This is a wonderful book to give as a gift - we have the hardcover edition. The story is most suitable for ages 2 and up, and there is also plenty to engage older readers.

This is our best bedtime story ever!

What is your favourite bedtime story to read with your children? I'd love to hear about it!

Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers

Once there was a boy and one day he found a penguin at his door...

So begins Lost and Found: the story of an unlikely friendship between a young boy and a penguin. When the penguin turns up, the young boy assumes he is lost and tries to help the penguin find his home - with surprising and heart warming results.

Lost and Found is quite long for a picture book - I remember when Maximilian first chose it for us to read (when he was around 13 months of age) that I was surprised that he sat through the whole book. The story is told in narrative format with no rhyming text. A young child with a short attention span might not make it through the whole story initially, but there is lots of detail in the illustrations to help sustain their interest.

On the flip side, Lost and Found is definitely a picture book with lasting value - even primary school readers would find much of interest in the illustrations and parents could have some fascinating discussion with their older child about the story elements. It would also be a nice addition to a beginner readers collection - so often early reader books don't really have much of a story so Lost and Found would be a nice story to help children who are learning to read independently.

Maximilian was lucky enough to receive this gorgeous book as a gift from a dear friend. Lost and Found was the first Oliver Jeffers' book to make it into our picture book collection (although I do have a copy of The Heart and the Bottle that is in my own book collection that I bought some years ago - an amazing book about grief. Right up there with A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness.)

As I said in my post about Stuck, I love everything Oliver Jeffers creates and he is one of my favourite children's authors. He manages to create stories that are funny, interesting and completely engaging as well as books that are absolutely delightful and beautiful to look at. Jeffers is an amazingly talented artist - most of the artwork in his picture books could easily be framed and hung on the wall, and the illustrations in Lost and Found really are unique and beautiful. Jeffers' website has prints of images from his books for sale - I'm coveting this one of the cover of Lost and Found amongst others!

We have the board book edition of Lost and Found, but it is available in paperback as well. If you are buying this book as a gift, I'd definitely recommend the board book for any child aged 3 and under - it will be much more hard-wearing for those little hands that won't be able to resist turning pages and examining the illustrations. For an older child, the paperback version is a great choice as the illustrations look even better bigger!!

Lost and Found has won multiple awards and has also been made into an award winning short film, which I can't wait to watch! 

I highly recommend this book as an addition to any picture book collection, and it is a real keeper - so perfect as a gift for any child. Best suited for children aged 2 and up.

Dr Seuss's Seusscase by Dr Seuss

It's been a real Dr Seuss week in our house and this is largely due to the fantastic Dr Seuss Seusscase!

The Seusscase is a fantastic collection of ten Dr Seuss stories. It has all the popular hits: Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, Oh, the Places You'll Go!, The Lorax, Fox in Socks and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; plus a whole lot more less well known Seuss titles (well less known to me anyway!) like I Wish that I had Duck Feet, Dr Seuss's ABC, etc.....

And the best part is all the books are packed together into a fantastic little suitcase (or Seusscase!) There is nothing cuter than Maximilian grabbing his little Seusscase and coming up to me saying "book, book!"

Maximilian received this great compendium of Dr Seuss books as a gift for his first Christmas, but it is only very recently that he has started to sit through and enjoy books by Dr Seuss. I hadn't remembered just how long many of the stories are but now, at 20 months, Maximilian quite happily sits through over 40 pages of Dr Seuss, which is pretty impressive I think.

The back of the books in the Seusscase are also colour coded: blue for sharing with your child, green for children just beginning to read on their own and yellow for fluent readers to enjoy. Dr Seuss books are full of rhyme and repetition to help early readers recognise the words and are also full of crazy nonsense words which are just plain fun to read aloud!

Maximilian loves to open his Seusscase and choose a book for us to read together. His first favourite was Oh! The Places You'll Go! - which I'm sorry to say I didn't know very well before but now adore. Green Eggs and Ham is also a huge hit and, this weeks favourite read by a long way, Fox in Socks - although I, like Mr Knox, have trouble reading the tongue twisters aloud! He has also just started to enjoy One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, which was a childhood favourite of mine.

If you're looking for a book gift for a child, you could do far worse than a Dr Seuss book and you probably can't do better than a whole box of them!! We love our Seusscase!

Warambi by Aleesah Darlison and Andrew Plant

Warambi is the story of a little bent-wing bat. The story follows Warambi growing up and learning to fly and hunt. When the bat colony's cabe is demolished by excavators, Warambi finds herself separated from the other bats and the story follows her adventure to find a new home.

We stumbled across this book at The Library Shop, the State Library of Queensland's bookshop - a wonderful place to find excellent children's books, particularly Brisbane, Queensland or Australian books (actually it is a wonderful place to find all kinds of fabulous books!!)

As soon as we saw Warambi, we had to buy a copy - the illustrations are excellent and the realistic artwork really brings little Warambi to life. (It is amazing to learn that the bent-wing bat is only 45mm long - hard to believe from looking at the incredibly detailed drawings of the bats in this book).

The other really lovely thing about this hardcover book is the endpapers, which contain additional information about bent-wing bats, including where they live, what they eat, etc. We don't read this information to Maximilian yet, but these are a great way to  learn more about the facts behind the story - something which will really appeal to the wonderful curiosity of older children.

This isn't a short story so it is not one for young babies or toddlers. Although the text on each page is quite short, there are a lot of pages so younger children just wouldn't have the attention span to enjoy the story. The illustrations are remarkably realistic and mostly dark coloured, so also wouldn't really appeal to young children in the way that bright primary colours do. At eighteen months age, Maximilian will now sit still and listen to the entire story and he enjoys it but he doesn't really understand what's going on in the story, and it will probably be more suitable from around age 3 and up.

Warambi would be a terrific addition to a storytime program based on Australian animals and could also be used for environmental awareness or a conservation theme. It would also be a great book for primary school teachers or librarians to use an education aid. I really think this is a wonderful and unique book and I'm glad we found it - it will be enjoyed in our home library for many years to come.

Stuck by Oliver Jeffers

This is a book that I bought for me! I simply couldn't resist Stuck when I came across it while browsing my favourite independent bookstore, Riverbend Books.

I have been an Oliver Jeffers fan since I first came across The Heart and the Bottle - an incredible book for older children that I'll discuss another time. There are some authors that you just love everything they do, and Oliver Jeffers is definitely in this category for me.

Stuck begins with Floyd getting his kite stuck in a tree. But the trouble begins when Floyd throws his favourite shoe at the kite and it gets stuck in the tree too. Floyd then tries, among other things, the milkman,  the family car and an orang utan - and they all get stuck too!

Stuck is definitely one that older children would enjoy, due to the ridiculous and hilarious approach that Floyd takes to getting his kite down. I particularly love the bit where he fetches a saw, lines it up, and then chucks it into the tree!

Like all of Jeffers' work, the illustrations are simply magnificent. I adore how expressive the illustrations are - I love the little storm cloud that appears above Floyd's face as his frustration builds when everything keeps getting stuck.

Parents will love this book. Although Maximilian definitely doesn't understand the humour yet, he does still enjoy the story - the repetitive use of the word "stuck" is particularly enjoyable for him and he loves to parrot me by repeating "stuck" as we read this book aloud.

Recommended for readers aged 3 and up, although Maximilian is proof that the book can be enjoyed from 18 months!