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Ah Louis, how I empathise greatly with you today! We're back once again looking at the wonderful work of Metaphrog, and here's the book that started it all for one of the most intriguing, interesting and downright surreal characters in comics, the sublime Louis.

You may have seen our interview with John and Sandra AKA Metaphrog (if not, go take a peek!) and we've previously also reviewed the utterly excellent "Louis - Night Salad" and the touching "The Photographs" from this talented duo, so let's take a look way back at Louis' first outing.

Louis is a fairly ordinary everyday kind of chap. Like most of us, he has a day job that kinda sucks, he has some companionship (in the shape of his awesome little robo-bird FC) and as we're introduced to Louis here in "Red Letter Day", he has a caring aunt who writes to him at great length.

Or does he? You see, key to the Louis books are a pair of nefarious characters. A "boss" who seems to delight in psychological manipulation and teasing, playing rather cruel tricks and jokes on Louis (who is largely completely oblivious to his cruelty, thankfully) and an annoyingly wheedling sidekick ("Shiny") who aids "the boss" in his trickery.

So we soon find out that they are actually writing to Louis, pretending to be his long lost aunt, just to get him to do daft things ("Wear big shoes! Grow a silly little chin beard!").

Charlotte pointed out that Louis books are like dreams. Imagine if you can a fever-dream where your frenzied night-time mumblings as you talk in your sleep during fitful dreams start to form a world around you. This is how it feels when you read a Louis book, like you're tapped directly into Louis' thoughts as his conscious and subconscious states mix and meld together.

The story delights in throwing you curve-balls thick and fast (Charlotte was on the edge of her seat when Louis' beloved FC is kidnapped and unceremoniously dumped in the trash, HOW DARE THEY!!) but as with Night Salad, it's down to the individual to discover the rather touching, and at times quite dark story of isolation, friendship and the daily grind that underpins Louis' characters and settings.

We can't get enough of Louis. Best of all, towards the end of the book you'll learn a lot more about Louis' origins, and some of the processes that John Chalmers and Sandra Marrs use while dreaming up Louis stories.

Fantastic for children, essential for grown ups. Love Louis!

Charlotte's best bit: Louis' joy at seeing FC enthusiastically scarfing down lots of lovely seeds and nuts (and a 5 year old fist-shake at Louis' nasty tormentors for making off with FC!)

Daddy's favourite bit: Beautifully told, wonderfully illustrated, at all times a book that makes you feel you're being slowly enveloped in an allegorical dreamscape whispering in multi-tones about the human condition. So much to come away from this book with, can't wait to read more!

(Kindly sent to us for review by John and Sandra at Metaphrog)

We kept spotting glimpses of this book on the back of other Flying Eye titles, we kept hearing people whispering about how great it was on Twitter. Now it's in our grasp and we're definitely, positively not letting it go.

Emily Hughes "Wild" is beautiful, and the cover knocks your eyes out the minute you see it, but that's nothing compared to what's inside. The story of a feral child, lost in the forest but cared for by the animals - almost like she's supposed to be there, in fact.

Taught to talk by birds, taught to play by foxes, taught to fish by bears, the Wild Child leads an idyllic lifestyle until one day she's caught in a trap. A human trap. Soon people turn up to find out what they've caught and really don't expect to see a little girl wrapped up in the bear trap (caught by her beautiful green hair, owch!)

Perhaps well meaning but ultimately interfering, the hunters carry the child back to civilisation with them and she's adopted by a psychologist and his wife, who find life with a wild child is anything but easy. It's not her fault. To her, these 'animals' can't talk properly, they can't eat properly and most of all they really do not know how to have fun.

What happens next? You know what I'm going to say - I urge you, nay BEG you to discover this book for yourself because you really need to. It had an electrifying effect on Charlotte. I think she liked the fact that the wild girl looked a little bit like a pint sized version of Merida, from Brave - and lived a fairly carefree life before human intervention. What child could possibly resist a tale where a girl does exactly what she wants, has fantastic animal friends to play with, and can curl up snugly to snooze with furry creatures? Certainly not Charlotte, she loved this book to bits from the moment she laid eyes on it.

Comparisons are made in the press release to the works of Sendak and Scarry (which I thought was a trifle odd as this really is nothing like a Richard Scarry book and really only shares heritage with Maurice Sendak through the word 'Wild' in the title).

If the intent was to compare this to the classic children's books that have become hugely well known and well loved, cited as hugely influential, and universally revered then that's fine - and if the intent was also to announce Emily Hughes to the world as a colossal talent fit to rub shoulders (figuratively) with the likes of Sendak, Scarry, Carle, Seuss, Bloy Graham, Keats (as in Ezra Jack) or any other legendary children's book creator then that's also mighty fine too. But this lady stands on her own two feet and if this is her first published book, you can only imagine how great she's going to be by the time she reaches her 5th. A star to eclipse the rest, mark our words.

Find out more about Emily on the Flying Eye Books website

Charlotte's best bit: Wild girl's eating habits once introduced to civilisation. Grarrr!

Daddy's favourite bit: This book is quite short (so perfect to squeeze in before bedtime), but it has a huge impact. Shades of Tarzan and The Jungle Book infused with one of the best female characters I've seen in a children's book in a long time. Beautiful art, massively impressive presentation, don't just stand there wide-eyed, go and get it now!

(Kindly sent to us for review by Bounce / Flying Eye Books)

Though my memory is hazy at times, I can remember my childhood being dominated by Dr Seuss books. I can also remember exactly how many copies of this utterly essential book I have owned. 6. The reason we ended up having to buy a new copy for Charlotte recently was mainly because those six have been borrowed, stolen or have ended up read until they literally fell apart (one copy I owned while studying art and design in Brighton was mercilessly stolen from my student digs along with a rather scratty Cat in the Hat T Shirt - at least the thief had taste!)

Charlotte loves Dr Seuss books, so rather than relying on the completely random chance that our local library has some (they are nearly always out on loan, with good reason!) we bought three. You've already seen my hopeless attempts at rhyming in our review of Green Eggs and Ham, so here's what we thought of the book that pretty much made Theodor Seuss Geisel a household name.

Two children are home alone (can you imagine two kids being left on their own with just a goldfish as a babysitter these days? The Daily Mail would have a field day, tsk tsk), bored, staring out of the window at the pouring rain. Bored with toys, bored with playing, bored bored bored.

But with a sharp rap at the door, the jauntiest and most fabulous hat in children's literary history, and the cheekiest grin enters The Cat in the Hat.

The Cat in the Hat knows what to do about boredom. He knows a million and one games you can play. Basically though he's an absolute show-off so all of the games basically involve him playing to his new captive audience, the two children and their grumpy (but quite justifiably so) goldfish.

Cats and balancing household objects usually means chaos, so despite the fish's loud protests The Cat in the Hat proceeds to trash the house, pretty much. It doesn't end there, because The Cat soon ropes in two friends for new games - Thing One and Thing Two!

If anything, they're even worse than the cat - flying kites indoors, skidding around the house and making even more mess and chaos than the Cat did.

Soon enough though, the wise goldfish spies Mum coming down the path. Cat-astrophe! Can the children possibly tidy up the humungous mess in time?

Just in case you're the one person on the planet who hasn't read the rest, I'll not spoil it for you. Knockabout fun in children's books doesn't really get any better than this, and it was obviously so hugely successful when it was originally written way back in 1954 and eventually printed and released in 1957.

Many authors are cited as the agents of radical change in the way children's books were written and perceived but right here is the very book and the very author that I'd say is responsible for and hugely influential on the way children's books are made today. It's timeless, it's fantastic fun, the rhymes flow like hot melted butter and it never ever gets boring. I was so pleased to see Charlotte's reaction to the Dr Seuss books (nothing but abject joy), and hope that she'll always love them as much as I do.

Charlotte's best bit: Thing One and Thing Two (they are SO CUTE, Daddy!)

Daddy's favourite bit: I won't spoil the end but I just cannot get enough of Seuss' crazy machinery in his stories. The one at the end of this book? I want one!

Back when Charlotte was still learning her ABCs, we picked up a brilliant Letterland ABC book - which we still read with her today (even though she's pretty hot on her alphabet).

So it was great to be able to revisit the idea of using letter-shaped characters to introduce early reading and literacy concepts to children, this time in the form of "Letterland - My First Dictionary".

As a visual guide through our language, what words mean, how to say them and how to spell them, this is a colourful and immersive book that (like most Letterland titles) doesn't feel like a 'school' book even though schools do indeed make good use of the series themselves.

One thing Charlotte really does get stuck on still is the difference between 'd' and 'b' - and this book gets around that neatly by having a duck-shaped character to represent 'd' (as you can see on the cover in our header above). Having letter characters designed this way helps immensely if children get stuck on particular letters, or have problems with tricky words.

Included in this dictionary are example sentences and stories using the words children begin to learn as they take their first literacy steps. What's good also is that this isn't strictly a phonics / decoding thing, though it does support those programs in the way it's laid out and structured.

Though the book says "Ages 3 +" it was still enjoyable for Charlotte (who is 5) and not too 'babyish' which was my first thought when I saw the cover. Actually it's a great little starter book for children who are learning to write sentences, and start putting together their own stories, as reference or just purely for the fun of taking letters and characters and using them in various ways (for instance, a great activity making pictures or scenes purely using letters and even numbers).

Charlotte's best bit: Lots of fun drawing and writing activities, with clear layouts and engaging illustrations

Daddy's favourite bit: Good for a range of ages and abilities.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Letterland)

Ed Vere's utterly awesome Banana! Made even more awesome with a Rik Mayall Voiceover!

You may have already seen our slightly gushing review of the MeBooks app - and things have certainly taken off for this innovative storytelling app over the last few months. Now the zany characters and deliciously crazy books of Mr Ed Vere himself have hit the MeBooks store.

Narrated in his trademark genius style by none other than Rik Mayall, these are brilliant fun so don't miss out!

Don't reach for your wallet just yet though, because MeBooks are giving you the chance to win 3 of those books as part of their Ed Vere Week.

Find out more on the MeBooks Website:

http://www.mebooks.co/campaign-vere#vere

The MeBooks app is free to download, with in-app book purchases.

For more information, take a gander at how the app works below: