Muki and Pickles By Ross Murray Beatnik Publishing; RRP: $30.00 Hardback I really enjoyed reading this book. It’s quite different to many books on the bookshelf with quirky humour and a gentle sense of being. Muki and Pickles walking in the woods spot one last peach on the tree across a stream. How will they get across the water to pick it? This discovery leads to a quest with these two friends working together, sharing their ideas and being resourceful. The text is driven by the characters dialogue, and has appealing illustrations offering further information and humour to the story. There is also a fun appendix with information on how to tie knots and bake an upside-down cake. This book is well worth a look, and will be enjoyed by tamariki 3+ Early One Morning Bedtime, Not Playtime! By Lawrence Schimel Illustrated by Elīna Brasliņa Oratia Books; RRP: $14.99 Board books (price is for each individual book) Early One Morning is about a young child who gets up before his family and raids the kitchen with the family cat: My mums are still in bed asleep. My sister too. I won’t make a peep. Bedtime, Not Playtime! is a bedtime story about a child who is being read a bedtime story by her two dads, before the dog leaps onto the bed, takes the child’s cuddly, and a race pursues … Now that Rex got to play, he flops in a heap and my daddies fall onto the sofa for a sleep. These two LBGTQI board books are written for our youngest readers, but since we don’t have enough books that normalise the different family structures many tamariki live in, it should be read to all tamariki to promote and normalise what might seem as diverse to some, but for others normal! December 2021 { 41 }
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