Age 1-3

Nobody expects photorealism in picturebooks for children. If there were, then all those animals in clothes would have had it, for a start. Good stylisation will do fine and, as she demonstrates most famously in her hugely successful books about Maisy the mouse, Lucy Cousins provides particularly enjoyable examples of it. Hooray for Fish! uses her trademark bright colours and simple, black-edged forms. It consists (give or take a bit of coral and seaweed) of big-eyed, fantastical fish, based on the shapes of real creatures, but patterned with all the variety and inventiveness that a child might use if let loose with a box of poster paints. In her illustrations, Cousins uses the three primary colours, spots and stripes, the numbers one, two and three — with the chance to count more — a few opposites and, in a few hand-written words, rhythms and rhymes and a range of lively adjectives. Some of her fishy creations even have character. Giving new meaning to “a school of fish”, this book is vivid and exuberant, each page a beautiful composition. Hooray for Lucy Cousins.

(Walker £10.99)

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