Books to Lift the Spirits

January is such a long month, we had the pleasure of Christmas, the excitment of new year, we have had promises of snow (Surrey has had none) gale force winds, rain and much else besides, we are now all looking for signs of Spring, well I can give you one, my two new hens have both started to lay!  However to help banish those January blues how about some great books to read, get lost in another world and forget this one for a while!

What am I looking forward to in 2015? Plenty!

First there is the brilliant, funny, in fact laugh out loud, Love Bomb by Jenny McLachlan.  If you didn't read Flirty Dancing I want to know why not and demand you go and find a copy to read now after all you need to in order to read Love Bomb. Well I suppose you don't really but it would make sense to!  Love Bomb is brilliant, it tells Betty's story, Betty is one of the group of girls who were once best friends.  Finally Betty is about to have a chance to fall in love but is she ready and what will it feel like?  A great reminder of that hilarious first kiss moment for some readers and a way to break the ice for others.  This is my first recommendation for the year!

On the subject of love and romance there is also Malorie Blackman's latest anthology, Love Hurts (Penguin Books) is in time for Valentines and is in fact more cheering than it sounds but more than that it is filled with brilliant short stories by a group of fantastic writers.

What about a book for young readers?  I adore 15 Things NOT To Do With A Baby by Margaret McAllister and illustrated by Holly Sterling (Frances Lincoln). This is not only perfect for new parents or those children new to being a sibling it is also a fun, funny picture book that everyone will love for its great pictures and warm text.

Oh and not forgetting non fiction titles there is the brilliant Baby Animals colouring book from Buster Books, not only hours of fun colouring in but also learning about lots of different animals, their names and their appearance.  Educational colouring at its best!

So there we are, some of my first suggestions for the year. This weekend I am off to tea with Scholastic then next week it's the Chicken House Big Breakfast so there will be plenty to report after those. Coming up I also have a launch for the 50th anniversary of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Malorie Blackman's Love Hurts, Daisy Hurst's The Girl With a Parrot on Her Head. Phew, its going to be a busy time and that will just be all the reading I'll be doing.

Interveiws with John Burningham on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Lisa Williamson on The Art of Being Normal are promised too so watch this space...!