Reviews from birth to 5 years

Wendel’s Workshop by Chris Riddelld (MacMillan, HB, £10.99).

This is a story based on the idea of reusing and recycling materials. When Wendel the mouse starts to build robots from junk in his scrapyard, he finds that some are more useful than others. After reading the book to the children, they immediately wanted to look at it again. The inside cover shows blueprints for various robots, which capture the imagination – the children wanted to suggest robot names, too. The story can be easily linked to drawing or modelling activities.