Children’s books

Snow Bear by Tony Mitton and Alison Brown (Bloomsbury; €8.80) 

Here is a bear who has nowhere to go. So he’s plodding along through the cold winter snow.

No matter where he tries to find shelter there will always be creatures to send him away.

Both owl and fox prove quite uncooperative as they would not have room for an extra body in their winter quarters.

Snow bear continues on his journey until he spots a farmhouse wondering at this point would anybody take pity on a cold little creature.

This is a beautifully illustrated, warm-hearted story for three- to five-year-olds to cherish.

T-veg, The Story Of A Carrot-crunching Dinosaur by Prasadam, Halls illustrated by Katherina Manollessou (Frances Lincoln; €15.1O HB) 

Like all young dinosaurs, Reginald the T-Rex loves his food, but instead of munchy bones and juicy steaks he prefers crunchy carrot cake and fruit, all of which makes his despairing parents groan with anxiety and they insist that he must eat meat.

That’s when he runs away, and, surprise surprise, meets a bunch of herbivores whom he befriends and teaches how to forage for decent food.

But will he come back to his home? With bouncy rhyme and colourful illustrations, this is a bright, laugh aloud book for age four and upwards.

Let’s Bake by Cathryn Dresser (Orion Children’s Books; €13.75) 

The appeal of Let’s Bake lies in its encouragement to families to bake together.

Seasonal recipes and colourful illustrations are the mainstay, but the book’s strength is the concentration initially on how-to tips, for making pastry or kneading dough.

The ground work is complemented by a series of step-by-step illustrations, of particular use for the enthusiastic pre-reading child, which should ensure that nothing goes wrong when experimenting on the imaginative recipes.

Let’s Bake also insists that the secret of being a successful baker is experimentation and a refusal to be put off by failure.

The family can confidently look forward to Dippy Baked Egg for breakfast, Cat’s Cookies for lunch, and some interesting Honey–bee biscuits for after dinner. Age seven and upwards.