Picture Kelpies come in threes and this month’s threesome are sure to be popular.
Lari Don teams up with illustrator Claire Keay for  a typically fun Lari Don story called the Magic Word. Catriona is trying to avoid having to write long thank you letters to everyone who sent her birthday presents. She finds a soup pot and makes up a magic spell which makes her pencils do the writing. But she can’t control the pencils, who write all the wrong things and continue to draw all over the kitchen. I love the fact that Catriona just guesses at the magic ingredients and words and that she is actually successful. Only in Lari’s world could this happen!
And the moral of the story is, that you are better off just doing the jobs that need to be done. I really wondered if the word procrastination would appear at some point but it didn’t. There was no need.
The Magic Word is available here from Amazon
Janis Mackay might be best known for her storytelling and her books for older children but this time she has joined forces with Gabby Grant for The Wee Seal. This is a story that you can imagine Janis reading. It has a sing song lilt, not quite poetry but not quite prose. It tells the story of a baby seal which lies on the beach and each night his mother comes to suckle him until he is old enough to swim away himself. During the day, he is watched over by a little boy who chases away tourists who think he has been abandoned.
Janis is at her best with stories relating to the sea and this is a lovely innocent nature tale.
The Wee Seal is available here from Amazon
Floris books, based in Edinburgh, are on a mission to produce books for Scottish children, using Scottish words and locations. This Scottish alphabet, illustrated by Kate Davies, uses wonderful examples like C for Castles, I for Islands and T for Thistle. Parents reading along will easily relate to Auld Lang Sang as sung at New Year and drawings of clouds of M for midgies populating Scottish holidays. This is definitely one for my grandson in Australia!
N is for Nessie: A Scottish Alphabet for Kids is available here from Amazon
