Armadillo and Hare and the Flamingo Affair

Grumpy Armadillo and cheerful Hare are best friends, despite being rather different in temperament. In this book, a flamingo moves to the neighbourhood and dazzles everyone with her jazzy colours and wonderful singing, Armadillo tells the story of how his slippers came to be, Hare tells Armadillo all about his tuba, and much cheese is eaten.

It can be difficult to find good stories for children who have grown out of picture books but aren’t yet ready for longer books. However, Jeremy Strong’s Armadillo and Hare series is absolutely perfect for those kids who want to read something that looks like a novel, but still has a great animal story in it with gentle humour, and isn’t too long.

In fact, there are nine mini stories in this short book, meaning that young readers have a clear start and end point every time they read, and get a real sense of achievement by finishing a story relatively quickly. Crucially, too, Strong is a brilliant writer for children, and each story has the perfect mix of adorable characters and humour that means reading is really fun.