Monthly Book Roundup - What we have been reading in October

Its time for my monthly book round up again. Each month I write about new books that I have introduced to Lily at bedtime and what we think of them. We always read around 4-5 books a night and most nights we end up reading the same ones with a few odd ones read in between. I find reading the same books helps Lily relax and she does grow fond of the stories each month and gets excited when I get them out to read each night. 

You can read all our other monthly roundups here.

This month with it being Halloween I decided to have a spooky theme to the books. With Lily only being nearly 2 year old I obviously didn't want them to be too scary and so I found these books that had a spooky theme but were quite tame. 

Here are this months choices. 

1. The Great Snortle Hunt - By Kate Hindley

This book was one of my favourites out of the lot. It has a really good rhyme to it. Though I must admit it does take it to be read a few times before you get the rhythm of the rhyme. The story has quite a spooky storyline to it with a nice happy ending. A group of animals are all going for a walk through the woods to a creepy house where the Snortle is meant to live. They are all really scared but in the end find out that actually the Snortle isn't that scary and is really quite friendly. Its a great book to put lots of enthusiasm into reading and also I do love the sketchy illustrations of it. I picked this book up from The works. If you can't find it in store. Sometimes they can order it in for you. Although halloween has been and gone, I would still recommend going and getting this book. 

2. A Rumpus in the Night - By Nick Ward 

This book looks a lot spookier on the cover than the story actually is. The story starts with a boy bringing his monster back from his dream. He is scared at first but then realises that the monster is also scared. They then become friends and play for the night. Only problem is that when the boy falls asleep his new found friend will disappear back into the dream world. Its a fun little story and has a decent amount to read in but not to much for someone Lily's age. I again picked this up from The Works. 

3. Im not Scared - By Dan Crisp 

This book was Lily's favourite out of the lot. Its all about a cat who isn't afraid of all the spooky things out there. Not monsters, Not giants, Not vampires! It has a great rhyme to it and there is only a line or so on each page so its not a very long story. The illustrations are great. Really colourful and lots of detail. I think Lily enjoyed this book because there were so many different pictures of different things inside and she many times asked "whats that" and pointed to them. She also loved the ending where all the creepy characters went RAHHHHHHHH and then would make me tell her all the different characters on that last page. The only thing that left me a little confused was that there was 3 pages of illustrations at the end with no story to it. Im not sure what they were doing there and so I either ended the story at RAHHHHHH or when I turned the pages I made up the rest of the story to go with the illustrations. I again got this book from The Works, which seems to be my go to book shop. 

4. Wake up Do, Lydia Loo - By Julia Donaldson 

Julia Donaldson is greatly known for her spooky books and famous for her Room on the Broom book. But when I found this book I thought we would give it a go for Halloween. The story is about a little girl fast asleep in her bed and the ghost is trying to scare her. But she just won't wake up. So he gets other things to come and help him. Such as a cow, a owl, and a baby. They do seem random things to come and help the ghost wake her up, but its all do the noises they make rhyme with Lydia Loo. So the ghost goes whoo and the cow moo and baby goes boohoo. The story is very repetitive with this part and the list of oooo sounds gets longer as the story goes on. In the end they all end up waking Lydia Loo up by sneezing but instead of being scared she just laughs. The story isn't as great as her classics like Room on the Broom but is still a great story and perfect for halloween. Also children will really love hearing the repetitive noises and rhymes in it. Lily really loved that there was a baby in the story as she really loves babies at the moment. I picked this book up online on amazon. 

Which book do you like the sound of the most?