My mum just got back from overseas, where she spent some time in the UK. She brought back a great present for Rowan – a toy London bus. Needless to say he loves it. Accompanying the toy was a fantastic book, Naughty Bus by Jan and Jerry Oke.

It is a self-published book, written by the author and photographed by her husband. Judging by the fact the it is sold at the Tate in London it must have been pretty successful. The book is unconventional in many respects, some of which give a hint that it hasn’t gone through a rigourous publishing process, but this kind of adds to its charm.

The author manages to get in the head of a child immersed in imaginative play, you can ‘hear’ the voices of the bus and the adults and other toys he encounters. The world is seen through the eyes of a toy bus, as the photos show the bus driving down a street of toys, wreaking havoc at the breakfast table, and getting into trouble in the garden. (“I don’t think much of the roads around here”, he says as he drives across the lawn.) The typography itself contains visual clues, aimed to aid and boost confidence in early readers.

Somehow the book also manages to incorporate a whole list of messages for children – from not getting to close to the edge of a pond, to saying thank-you and and the necessity of cleaning ones teeth. Gotta love that.