Julia Donaldson is the new children's laureate and is most famous for the short children's book the Gruffalo, however, she has been a co-author on a range of other books for children. One of them is with Lydia Monks as the cartoonist called what the ladybird heard and tells the tale of a farm. The book is printed in large pages, it's colourful and the language is poetic and flowing.

What the ladybird heard is a very simple tale telling the story of a ladybird on the farm, the farm contains a prize cow and two bad men are trying to steal the cow. They draw a plan to steal the cow based on the noises of the animals as they walk past there barns in the dead of night. The ladybird hears this and gets the other animals to impersonate their colleagues and therefore confuse the two bad men.

Each page in this story is bright colourful, the cartoon feel of the characters and the slightly naive art only add to the lovely language employed by Julia Donaldson to tell a story that every child will enjoy. For the very young like my 18 month old, the colours and noises of the animals are enough to entertain and engage with for my nearly 3 year old there is the challenge of finding the ladybird on every page and spotting all the animals. The story is simple and my near three year old can pretty tell himself the story whilst flicking through the book, in fact its really endearing to hear him saying that the two bad men have come and the ladybird tells the animals to impersonate the others "the goat says meow" etc.

As I said the book is by Julia Donaldson and is I think my favourite, telling the story takes about 10 minutes so it's perfect for last thing before bed milk time or snooze time during the day. The kids love it, they ask for the ladybird book and get really excited when the book comes out because the front is very bright yellow and easily recognisable.

I think this book is a lovely way to introduce your children to animals, storytelling and drawings. When they are older they seem to naturally find a way of interacting with the book and because each book is plastic rather than paper it has withstood 6 months of story time which is a testament to the quality of the book.
Julia Donaldson's children's laureate is well deserved in my opinion, her books are lyrical, poetic and pleasant to read with the outstanding drawings and depictions they have become a favourite.