Hubble Bubble: The Glorious Granny Bake Off by Tracey Corderoy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a charming and quite lovely collection of short stories by Corderoy, and illustrated by Joe Berger. Each story is about 40 pages, thickly illustrated, and with short chapters which sing to be read aloud at a storytime or as a bedtime read. I really like that – it’s clever, considerate writing and reminded me a lot of Alex T Smith’s impeccable Claude books or Shirley Hughes & Clara Vulliamy’s equally impeccable Dixie O’Day books.
Pandora’s granny is (whisper it) a witch. She’s adorable; very much a good witch, all round and mischevious and more than a little bit naughty. Each story sees her and Pandora get into trouble!
There’s some really nice touches throughout this – the repeated instruction to (whisper it) every time the W word is mentioned is one that caught my eye (told you this would be good for reading out loud) and I also had a lot of love for Pandora herself. She’s very much an every girl sort of character but Berger’s simple and vivid illustrations give her a unique identity on the page.
This is the first of a series and as mentioned before, reminded me a lot of Hughes & Vulliamy and Alex T Smith. It also reminded me of Susie Day’s work, that sort of marshmallow by the fire warmth of family and fun. There’s also a kind of Famous Five-esque vibe of ‘we’ll sort it out and have fun in the process’. Which is lovely. This book is lovely. It’s very lovely. It makes me want to make fairycakes and have crumpets.
Daisy May Johnson 
I’ve been wondering about getting this for my 5 year old. Great you like it. I just need to find more time to read bits again in the bookshop before parting with the money!
It is very charming and very much cut of a Claude-esque cloth. I hope she enjoys it! 🙂