Miss Brick the Builder's Baby ¦ Mr and Mrs Hay the Horse ¦ Mrs Lather's Laundry ¦ Master Money the Millionaire ¦ Mr Buzz the Beeman ¦ Mr Tick the Teacher

In this the second batch of Happy Families - as was the case with the first set - three titles are much better than the rest. My favourite is Miss Brick the Builder's Baby in which this tough little character seems bent on becoming a demolition expert rather than following in mum and dad's footsteps, despite the efforts of all her relations. Both story and pictures are hilarious; the illustration of the Baby Show had one group of infants reduced to helpless laughter.

The other stories which have proved most popular are Mrs Lather's Laundry, where, fed up with washing the usual items, Mrs Lather takes in more and more outlandish 'washing'; and Mr and Mrs Hay the Horse, about a highly unconventional husband and wife pantomime partnership who are a constant source of embarrassment to their children - 'our mum and dad are a horse' - until they save the day at the school Christmas show.

Less successful are: Master Money the Millionaire, about a boy who is always digging up treasure; Mr Tick the Teacher, whose children's acting prowess saves his small village school from closure; and Mr Buzz the Beeman, which employs a folk tale device but is too close to The Elephant and the Bad Baby for comfort.

All the books are well designed and attractively illustrated; one aspect of the illustrations in Mr and Mrs Hay did worry me though - the characters appear as caricatures of racial types and the golliwog clown should not have been included. The continued aversion to the use of contractions is my only other reservation. Despite this, the books have proved successful with children whose ages range from five to twelve.