The Winner of the Aventis Prize: Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels, Global Garden, An Eden Book Project (London: Transworld), 2005).

A pop up book. Very pretty but with very little information. Too often the pictures are supposed to speak for themselves, but I'm not convinced. When the jeans are revealed to be made of cotton bolls, how many European parents would be able to recognise them?

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Which just goes to show that kids and adults don't have the same tastes. The short-list came from the adult judges, the prize was selected by kids. I may be biased, but I thought Johnny Ball's Think of a Number was head and shoulders the best book, and certainly the only one for which I didn't have any serious criticisms.