Hot Hot Hot

This is a welcome return for the winsome woolly mammoths: Oscar with the striped bobble hat and Arabella with the little pink ears. They already have one picture book adventure to their credit. This time, their enjoyment of the freezing winds and snow of the Ice Age winter is curtailed by an unusually hot summer. They try various ways of keeping cool, all with no success. Then Oscar appears brandishing scissors, a comb and a mirror. It’s time for a hair cut, and the shaven look is soon all the rage. Luckily, everyone’s hair grows back by the time winter comes around again, except a primitive two-legged creature, who has remained (largely) hairless to this day.

Layton has plenty of fun with the story, his animals are drawn with energy and character, he uses the pages with ingenuity and drama, and the colours make you feel the heat and the cold. Readers will enjoy following the fate of the long-suffering cave man, who is never mentioned directly in the text.