Inspired by a trip to the British seaside town of Whitstable in Kent, Benji Davies’s acclaimed 2013 release The Storm Whale made his name worldwide as an author-illustrator and, a decade on, Davies still receives fan mail from faraway shores.
The story of a young boy who befriends a whale after finding it washed up on the sand, its success prompted two more books from the “world of The Storm Whale”, and now a fourth in the series. Their charm lies partly in the timeless quality of the simple yet love-filled coastal world they depict. Each opens with the familiar line, “Noi lived with his dad and six cats by the sea” and the irresistible (though never explicitly posed) challenge to spot every one of those cats preening and prowling around the wooden hut that Noi and his fisher father call home.
The latest, The Great Storm Whale (Simon & Schuster), begins with a visit from Noi’s granny, the star of 2018’s Grandma Bird, who tries to calm Noi with a story during bad weather. It evolves into a prequel of sorts as granny’s tale recalls a young girl (herself, we eventually learn) whose own whale playmate performed an extraordinary act of kindness after a storm wrecked the girl’s home. It’s a world fans won’t want to leave; I do hope Noi’s dad’s backstory is told next.
With her characteristic inky illustrations in gemstone colours, Nicola Kent returns with Giraffe and a Half (Andersen Press), about a young giraffe with six legs, three ears, adorable fluttering eyelashes, but no friends. Her self-consciousness has made her shy. One day, playing hide-and-seek on her own, she chances upon a flock of birds who scatter out of a tree, joyously resembling a tin of rainbow-bright Quality Streets thrown into the air. The flock includes “a bird with a third” – three wings and three legs – who encourages the giraffe to shake off her inhibitions and make some friends. “The same or different, I don’t care,” the bird sings. “It soon gets boring to point and stare.” At the end, an author’s note explains the book’s origins in Kent’s own childhood experiences, which explains the perfectly reassuring tone.
Lliana Bird’s debut, Baboo the Unusual Bee (Rocket Bird Books), with bold primary-coloured drawings by Aysha Tengiz, also explores difference. Here, though, Baboo, a bee with pink stripes, not yellow, is explicitly rejected by a spiteful insect before finding acceptance during a magnificent moonlit dance with a new pal, a green ladybird.
Both Kent and Bird’s books, like Rob Biddulph’s Odd Dog Out (2016) and Weirdo (2021) by Zadie Smith and Nick Laird (with illustrator Magenta Fox), are a fun way to emphasise that, as Bird puts it, “there’s nothing more special than just being you”.
Big Bear can sniff winter around the corner in The Big Dreaming (Bloomsbury). But as he prepares to hibernate, his son Little Bear worries he’ll run out of dreams. Daniel Egnéus’s atmospheric woodland illustrations are the ideal accompaniment to Michael Rosen’s gorgeous, lyrical text, as Little Bear sets off to collect spare dreams from fellow animals, including Wolf’s one of “Always Having Hope”.
Family is also at the heart of renowned novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut for children, Mama’s Sleeping Scarf (HarperCollins), with art by Joelle Avelino. Adichie became a mother in 2016 and has previously published a book of advice about how to raise a feminist daughter, Dear Ijeawele, Or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her new picture book features a child called Chino, who enjoys playing with the hair scarf her Mama wears to bed while Mama goes to work and she stays home with her father and grandparents. At once a peek into a day in the life of a toddler, it is also a tender act of memorial, as Adichie writes under the pseudonym Nwa Grace-James – in honour of her deceased parents, James and Grace. The recurring pattern of Mama’s vivid green scarf, decorated with bright red and blue rings and beautifully reproduced on the endsheets, poignantly evokes a sense of the circle of life.
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