22nd July Rachel Morrisoe

At the beginning of the year I bought a picture book called The Drama Llama by Rachel Morrisoe and Ella Okstad for the library.  I bought it because it is about llamas which are popular in our library and because it was one of the books shortlisted for the Early Childhood section of the  Spark! School Book Awards, 2023 prize. These awards are voted for by young children, so I know that the books on this shortlist will appeal to my young students. When I read the blurb and saw that it was about a child who worried I knew it would also be read by teachers. Win win!

In fact the book won its category. I knew of Ella Okstad, but I had not heard of Rachel Morrisoe, so I went looking for more books by her. She is an English children's author. She is fairly new at this writing gig so she only has four books so far. I bought How to Grow a Unicorn and How to Grow a Dragon because they were cheap paperbacks, illustrated by Steven Lenton of Shifty McGifty fame, and I thought they fitted the Book Week theme well, Read, Grow, Inspire. They certainly do that.

In these rhyming stories we meet Sarah and Mr Pottifer's Parlour of Plants, a magical shop with the most surprising plants you'll ever see! Sarah goes to the shop to buy the perfect gift for her grandmother who loves gardens. When she gets to the shop, everything grows wildly out -of-hand and the plants grow magical creatures. This hilarious book will inspire young readers to live their own unicorn fantasy.

Sarah ends up working for Mr Pottifer and then in the second book, an unexpected delivery of dragodil seeds provides the perfect chance for Sarah and Mr Pottifer to grow helpful dragon pets for their customers - or does it? It turns out that these fiery dragons are not very well-behaved at all... and everything soon spirals into smoke-filled, out-of-control DRAGON CHAOS!

I'm not sure if there's more to come, but there is certainly room to be inspired by other magical creatures that Sarah and Mr Pottifer could organise. What would you buy at Mr Pottifer's Parlour of Plants? Why is it called a parlour and not a shop?

The fourth Rachel Morrisoe book, The Truth About Yeticorns  which is also illustrated by Ella Okstad has just been released and this time the focus is on telling fibs.

Meet Sarah

1st & 2nd February Tomato Festival

This morning I was reading the newspaper and was surprised to read that Sydney is hosting a Tomato Festival at the Botanical Gardens on the 1st and 2nd February. This got me thinking about tomatoes, a fruit that I feel is somewhat overrated in its raw state. Friends say that is because I never have really good ones straight from the garden. Recently though I did. A friend served up a salad that was just tomatoes of various colours straight from her garden with olive oil and a little basil and they were good, very good!

Next I thought about how there were tomatoes growing in the school vegetable garden and how I have never thought much about them as a display impetus in the library. What did we have about tomatoes?  I thought of the 'signature' book I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, the very first Charlie and Lola book by Lauren Child and then had to look in the catalogue. There was not much as I discovered. Here is the sum total!

Oh No, Monster Tomato!  a picture book about a tomato-growing competition by Jim Helmore and Beware! Killer Tomatoes, a short chapter book from Jeremy Strong's Laugh Your Socks Off series continue the fun tomatoes conjure up in fiction and then there are a few non fiction books that look at how to grow tomatoes and their lifecycles. Compared to apples, pumpkins, carrots and potatoes, tomatoes are certainly under-represented in children's books!