Children’s books

TWEET, Tweet in the Tree by Julie Fletcher and Anna Lubecka (Caterpillar Books, €6.30) is a handy-sized board book for toddlers aged 18 months who are at the stage of identifying animals and birds. The loud colours and simple shapes, along with easy rhyming read-aloud words, create the perfect bedtime book.

Click Clack, Crocodile’s Back by Kathryn White and Joelle Dreidemy (Little Tiger Press, €7.55) will delight three to five-year-olds with its clever oneupmanship by the jungle animals that are preyed upon by Crocodile. As he slips silently through the water, ‘slyly disguised as the trunk of a tree, ready to snatch you and eat you for tea,’ their fear is palpable. But clever monkey has a plan. With playful rhyme and colourful illustrations, this book is laugh-aloud fun.

Kicking On is by Dave Hannigan (O’Brien Press, €7.99). When American Shaun Reedy, fresh from a traumatic Super Bowl loss, arrives in Dromtarry, he immediately gets involved with the village’s U-11 Gaelic football team. His fresh ideas, enthusiasm, and his refusal to accept defeat when the very existence of the club is threatened, is an inspiration to Peter, Davey and their teammates. The story bounds along authentically from match to match, with the usual scattering of last-minute goals and points. Inevitably Reedy has to return to the States to lay his own ghosts to rest, but not before he solves the club’s problems. Age 9+

Inside My Head by Jim Carrington (Bloomsbury, €8.80). Before starting at her new school in Norfolk, Zoe, who has just moved there from London, befriends Gary, an introverted loner who is mercilessly bullied by Paul Knaggs. T Zoe’s persistence and loyalty eventually force Gary to confide in her and share something of his past, but the bullying is driving him to breaking point. A compelling portrait of the nastier side of school life, narrated in turn by Zoe, David and Gary. A fourth narrator, Knaggs, however, would have given an invaluable insight into what seemed like motiveless bullying. Teenage.