Competition: Fatherhood (The Essential Guide)

A book about being a dad? Well, seeing as though I'm a mum, I've drafted in help.

"When the Boy's Mummy was expecting the Boy, my first stop in any bookshop was the parenting section. Row after row of books about how to be an ideal mother, what mothers should be doing, the truth about motherhood and then squeezed into the end… a couple of books on what being a father is like.

Invariably, those books would also be of the humourous type, full of amusing stories. That's all well and good, but often new dads (and potential dads) do also need more practical advice: how to support the new mother, what your employment and leave rights are, even details on claiming tax credits.

It's into that niche that Tim Atkinson's "Fatherhood: The Essential Guide" fits. The book is broken up into eight chapters that cover individual stages from planning a family up to the baby's third year, including the initial important bits like how to change a nappy (Mrs. TheBoyandMe didn't have the willpower to show me for two weeks which meant she did every change) and registering the birth (or you incur a fine!). There is a wealth of other important practical information on financial help and legal entitlements.

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Review: Teddy Hunt

The Boy's favourite bedtime book has changed to this simple, yet lovely, story book from Marks and Spencer.

Teddy Hunt is a traditional 'life-the-flap' book which features a little boy (looks like The Boy) trying to find his teddy bear, called 'Spencer' (not sure if the main character's name is Mark), in order to have a picnic with him. He searches around his garden to try and find him and manages to find a lot of his other toys, but not Spencer. En route he collects up all the other toys in his wagon who are able to share in the eventual picnic. You'll never guess where Spencer was hiding all the time!

The Boy adores this book and he has made us read it repeatedly every single for the past three weeks. He now knows it really well, enough to show you how fabulous a book it is himself.