The Shopping Expedition

This is Ahlberg’s 137th book, and illustrator Amstutz is equally prolific. They make a good team in this gentle picture book, where an ordinary trip to the shops is changed via a small child’s imagination into a daring journey involving rivers, jungles, snow and flood. But since Mum keeps smiling all the time she is pushing the pram, there is never any sense of danger as one page follows another, each one packed with comically drawn figures painted in bright, bold colours.