Synopsis:More Bert? Certainly! Here's "A Bit More" - six huge chapters in which our hero shares his crisps, loses his dog and needs a haircut!

Review: A collaboration between Allan Ahlberg and Raymond Briggs is a notable event, and the creation of the Bert books has fulfilled all the expectations readers might have from reading their earlier, individual works.

Ahlberg is master of the repetitive and easily predicted text, ideal for telling aloud to pre-readers and very early readers, full of cues to encourage children to join in, contribute their own ideas and 'read' the text at their own level. This also makes it highly suitable for use in literacy lessons, containing as it does many of the features which are required of the texts read. Its division into chapters (in reality these are separate stories) would also encourage a classroom consideration of what constitutes a chapter, and why books use them. Bert and his dog, (also Bert!) engage readers with their unassuming, funny, occasionally worrying (as when Bert the dog runs away), but comfortingly resolved life.

Briggs' illustrations are just right, and contain all the honesty and humour we have come to expect from his work. Like Ahlberg's text, Briggs' pictures actively invite the involvement of readers, the haircut chapter being a notable example.

A delightful book for anyone over the age of 0!

2006-11-12