Age 2-6

Have you ever known a child who made or drew something and then decided that it looked more like something else? Stewart takes this experience and subjects it to comic exaggeration. When his boy hero tries to make a paper swan it ends up with four legs and horns. When he attempts to knit a pair of gloves, he finds he has made a pair of striped dolphins. He resorts to a kit, but what should have been a model aeroplane comes out as a woolly mammoth. The mammoth, though, is enormous fun. It makes itself wings and takes the boy on its back to the Arctic, where the foxes host an ice sculpture competition, which the boy wins, although his stegosaurus started out as a ballerina. This funny book celebrates the pleasure of making things and carries the reassuring message that it doesn’t matter if the finished creation doesn’t end up quite as planned. Drawn with a relaxed ink line, scribbly shading and a mix of watercolour and gouache, the book has the slightly muted and nostalgic tones of early comics and dated toy packaging. In a clever touch, some of Stewart’s creatures leave you wondering quite what they are meant to be. Which is, you realise, just fine.

ME AND MY MAMMOTH by Joel Stewart

(Macmillan £9.99)

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