Outside in World | Browse Books
Use our Book Finder to search for books by Title (or part of the title), Author, ISBN, Age Range, Keyword, or Continent/Country. Then simply click the magnifying glass to start your search.
If a title starts with 'The', leave this out as this is added to the end of the title in brackets. funny pictures funny images funny photos really funny pictures
‘We need the literature of other countries to expand our
horizons and stimulate our ideas. Without it, we are not only
diminished, we are starved’
(The Times, Magnus Linklater 29/06/05)
Please email us to sign up to our Newsletter
Before We Sleep
by Giorgio Volpe
Age Range: Under_5
All that matters to Little Red the fox is being with his best friend Hazel the dormouse. Throughout the spring and summer, they play together in their forest home, but as the leaves turn golden and winter approaches everything will change. Hazel must hibernate and Little Red will be left all alone. As the time for sleep nears, Little Red finds ways of putting off the inevitable by trying to keep the dormouse awake. Perhaps the two friends can share one last story together!
This is a lovely whimsical story by Italian author Giorgio Volpe, translated by Angus Yuen-Killick about the importance of friendship and being there for each other.
The pencil and crayon illustrations by Italian artist Paolo Proietti are expressive. The rich colour palette shows the change of seasons in all their different hues and there are lovely spreads of the two friends as they have fun playing together: in one of the images Hazel is seen in her two-storied teapot home in her duvet-covered bed and in another snuggled up against Little Red’s ear as she sleeps. Proietti also shows the vulnerability of the fox with an illustration of a forlorn Little Red as he faces the loneliness of a long cold winter without his friend.