Children's books

One of the many pleasures of having a family is that you get to read children's books again. The ones you read the first time round, the ones you missed out on, and there's even some half-decent new ones out there.

Growing up in the 60s, the books I loved most were Richard Scarry's Busy Busy World, What Do People Do All Day? etc. Brilliantly drawn worlds of animals masquerading as humans going about their daily business in Busytown. Busy Busy World, particularly, got me interested in geography and travel. I've also enjoyed revisiting the weird world of Dr Seuss, and getting re-stuck into abridged classics like Oliver Twist, Little Women, Peter Pan, Swiss Family Robinson, Alice in Wonderland... And of course Hans Christian Anderson, Grimm and many a scary folk tale. Great stuff.

Apart from Noddy (which was too odd to ignore), Enid Blyton's 700+ titles passed me by, but the girls are really into the Famous Five and Secret Seven, and retrospectively I am too. Guilty pleasures... I also missed out on The Chronicles of Narnia which are all the rage now. And I don't recall reading Roald Dahl then either (A especially loves Matilda). An important discovery has been the Frog and Toad books written by Arnold Lobel in the 70s. Funny, dry and philosophical. Bizarrely, an ex-pat theatre group performed a musical version here in Bangkok. And there's always the Mr Men.

New faves include Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler's Gruffalo etc and some of Michael Morpurgo's output... but I'm getting to be like I am in music: the oldies are the best. Interestingly, the girls have just started appreciating Asterix. But whither Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons? I remember liking them - and my mother certainly did. They're a bit Blyton-ish so they might go for it. And just to wrap this up, here's a little-known fact: Ransome spent a good deal of his early writing career in Russia, before and after the Revolution, married Trotsky's personal secretary and dabbled in espionage.