Dropping their electronic game into a pond wasn’t part of the plan for the child sent outside to play in this book. Sad for them, but this little mishap unlocks a day lined with adventure and gentle surrealism, as they explore the natural world and embrace an older form of play. When artist-author Beatrice Alemagna was a child she adored Pippi Longstocking. And there is more than a touch of that free-roaming hero in these beautiful pages. And, like Max in Where the Wild Things Are, the adventuring child returns home, to a place familiar yet subtly changed.

Mike Shuttleworth is a children’s and YA specialist at Readings Hawthorn.