I am a huge fan of Maggie Hutchings and Felicita Sala’s Your Birthday Was the Best! so I was overjoyed to see the return of my favourite picture-book cockroach family in this perfectly timed follow-up.

Stowing away in a backpack with Uncle Barry, Aunt Mabel and all the cousins, our cockroach hero is en route to school for a wonderful day of playing hide-and-seek in lunch boxes and dancing on the teacher’s head during show-and-tell.

This hilarious, exuberant story will certainly help to ease any butterflies for young readers returning to the classroom or those who are just starting out at school. The beauty of this book is that while our cockroach friend narrates what it assumes to be positive, joyful day at school, the pictures tell an altogether different story – one that is pure chaos. Children are crying! The teacher has fainted! There is even a bit of toilet humour in this instalment, so laughs are guaranteed.

Hutchings and Sala are a talented team, and together they have created a fantastic, memorable character. I’m hoping we will see more in this series, and can’t help wondering where our cockroaches will head to for their next adventure; I think ‘Your Bookshop Is the Best’ would be a lot of fun!

For ages 3+.

Kim Gruschow is the children’s book buyer at Readings St Kilda.