The Babies' Hotel

This has become a firm favourite with the children, though it took quite a while to get it off the ground. Most children close to the appropriate age of those depicted couldn't immediately grasp the concepts involved. The book is, as it were, an advertisement brochure for an hotel, Rompers, which caters only for toddlers - allowing them the freedom to do all they ever wanted and providing facilities which are their idea of heaven. A lot of children have had little experience of hotels or indeed of language put to this kind of use. The Babies' Hotel is a very useful teaching aid for the National Curriculum and is, in its own right, great fun. It will certainly appeal to adults sharing the book. The illustrations match Mary Hoffman's wry 'hard sell' with gentle humour and fascinating detail and encourage children to return to the book again and again.