Jon Burgerman's Daily Doodle

Jon Burgerman's Daily Doodle

By Jon Burgerman

Published by Laurence King Publishing

For young budding artists out there, great pieces of art can often start from just a doodle! Jon Burgerman has recently released a daily doodle book to encourage everyone to have fun drawing and to remember that it's not important to be perfect - this is a starting point for your own discoveries.

He provides instructions and tips to create your own super doodles from food, animals, robots, people, transport to some really random subjects. The book consists of mostly black and white pages but in the middle, there's a selection of subjects with brightly coloured examples and a few neon colours that makes the doodles pop from the page. 

Daily Doodle is inspired by Jon's popular Snapchat Daily Doodle - He encourages you to share your doodles online with #dailydoodlebook. You can also find stickers at the back. There's a crazy collection of ideas, but it looks super fun and I think you'll find yourself wanting to join in!

An A to Z of Monsters and Magical Beings

An A to Z of Monsters and Magical Beings

Text by Aidan Onn

Illustrations by Rob Hodgson

Published by Laurence King

There seems to be an on-going monster theme by illustrator Rob Hodgson at the moment, after recently reviewing Monster Bingo, here's another monster delight: you can find out more about these fantastical, magical and a touch scary creatures in an A to Z of Monsters and Magical Beings.

Featuring a different magical being per letter of the alphabet, there's a good and varied selection of monsters; from the more popular ones such as an alien, banshee, ghost to even Nessie, to monsters from around the world; the Xing Tian in China, or the Ushi-Oni in Japan among others. There's a brief paragraph per monster which gives you some history and sometimes advice if you have the misfortune of meeting these beasties. 

Rob Hodgson has a distinctive style that works really well with the monster theme. Age range for the book would be 5/6+ depending on your child and if they're a fan of monsters, or a little beastie themselves. Aoife has just turned 3 and is definitely too young for this book however she managed to get her hands on this before I could warn her, and actually enjoyed flicking through the book with me and talking about the characters but she is very much into magical beings at the moment so I don't think I'll be able to keep her away from this book for too long.  

I like the style of the book with it's big, full paged illustrations, and a few fun things to spot in the backgrounds. It's a hit with us and one where children will enjoy the interesting facts and more with this guide to the strange, scary and wonderful world of monsters and ancient mythical beings!