Age 1-4

This picturebook won the best new illustrator award in Booktrust’s Early Years awards for 2005. Usui has a sophisticated sense of the design of a page, and his pictures have the child-friendliness of computerised cartoons without the nasty slickness: simplified but energetic, they have the roughness of doodles, and come in a pleasing, muted, autumnal range of colours on what looks like faintly striped brown paper with a white wash. The book tells a madcap story of a crocodile who is late for a party and hurtles into other animals — Crash! Bump! Screech! — squishing resilient mice and bouncing off hedgehogs in a zany slapstick adventure of the kind that makes very little children laugh. There is lots of noise and action and a certain irrationality: penguins on an ice floe are a short hop from town; crocodiles, mice, bears, elephants and hedgehogs are neighbours; and creatures left behind on the journey arrive ahead of the principal character. But the story never loses its momentum and makes good use of varied techniques such as a tall image that requires the book to be turned on its side, one strategic cut-out, and a startling double-page picture. And it ends with a witty and enjoyable surprise.

(Little Tiger Press £5.99)

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