Duncan's Tree House; Duncan and the Bird

Duncan's Tree House appealed to all the children who listened to it. It has all the right ingredients: a furnished treehouse in which Duncan can stay all night, monsters safely in his imagination, humour in that his dog needs a wee but can't get down the ladder, an adventure in the dark with a wonderful serene dawn to bring everything crisply back to normal again. Amanda Vesey gives her audience all the trimmings in her flat, stylised illustrations-so much so that we had children making pretend treehouses all over the place.

Sadly, the sequel, Duncan and the Bird, was a real disappointment. The children fell on it as the next 'Duncan book', but did not get what they were expecting. The genre was quite different with fantasy abounding. This contradicted the tight leash on reality which played a large part in the success of the first book and, with the loosening, somehow the story drifts and the charm is lost.