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It’s a familiar scenario from childhood; the thrill of setting off with pocket money to spend: What to choose with the coins in your pocket? Where to spend it? And yet, in To Market! To Market! by Anushka Ravishankar, illustrated by Emanuele Scanziani, a joyous, richly illustrated rhyme, what one little girl discovers is that the real fun’s not in the spending and buying at all.

Great fun to read aloud, especially if you let your voice mirror the playful typesetting, To Market! To Market! is also beautiful and exciting to look at. Vibrant, intensely coloured illustrations of various market stalls overflowing with goods evoke childhood fantasies of hoards of treasure.

Eye-catching and exuberant, To Market! To Market! will brighten anyone’s bookshelves, as well as giving a window onto another culture – the market stalls in question happen to be in India, but the fun and beauty in this book are universal.

Likewise, whilst the specifics of Off to Market by Elizabeth Dale, illustrated by Erika Pal may seem a world way to many readers – following the problems one boy has on the bus to a market, this time in Africa – kids the world over will delight in seeing how kids just like them can be the ones to solve problems adults can’t seem to get their head around.

The market bus, overloaded with people, goods and livestock, has ground to a halt. The adults all complain, but no-one makes a move until young Keb shows them what they need to do. Where would adults be without kids, heh?

Click to see more illustrations from ‘Off to Market’

With lively, rhyming text and bright illustrations mixing watercolour, print making techniques and blocks of bold flat colour Off to Market is delightful. My kids immediately remembered The No. 1 Car Spotter by Atinuke (my review here), a super early chapter book, which also features an African market.

Hoping our bus journey to the big markets in town wouldn’t turn out to be nearly as eventful as that in Off to Market we set off for a day out exploring the sights and sounds of all sorts of (Birmingham) market stalls.

As we were out and about we didn’t listen to any music, but if you’re looking for a market-themed, kid-friendly set of songs you could start with these:

Apart from visiting your own local market, you could enjoy these activities alongside reading the books I’ve recommended today:

Have you a good market near to you? I’ve always wanted to go to a flower market or a spice market, but what about you?

Disclosure: Both books reviewed today were sent to me for review consideration by their respective publishers.

The image of little Azad and his camel curled up together fast asleep on the title page of Azad’s Camel by Erika Pal (Frances Lincoln 2009 (UK)/2010 (US)) certainly lends itself to a bedtime story.  The rather jaunty narrative, coupled with the visual impact of cartoon-like characters set against the ochres and browns of the desert landscape, carries young listeners through the story to its happy ending, rather like a fairy tale in which the wicked stepmother is outwitted and the characters we’ve been rooting for all live happily ever after. Except here, Azad is sold by his uncle to a rich sheikh who spots Azad’s handstands on a goalpost and decides he will make a good camel rider. Waking up after his first night in the desert, Azad asks for something to eat, only to be yelled at: “Here, you have to earn your breakfast!”  He is immediately put onto a camel and indeed, his balancing powers come in most useful. But Azad doesn’t like riding camels at full speed, even if he does win lots of races. And one night his camel tells him that he doesn’t like racing either… So the next day, they run in their race, they win it, and then they simply carry on going, on and on until no one chases them any more. They wake up after a cold night in the desert (and there’s some sweet help at hand here) and find themselves surrounded by Bedouin, who give Azad and his camel a loving welcome – they have “found a home at last”.

I don’t usually like to give away the whole story when I’m talking about books but it’s important here to understand that this special story will endear itself to young readers/listeners, despite some harsh realities that provide it with its backbone. As is fitting for the story’s targeted audience (4-8), the emphasis is on one little boy’s quest to find a happy home, and his achievement of that goal thanks to the assistance of a talking camel. However, the illustrations especially root the story in its contemporary setting – an airplane flies overhead, the young riders wear modern riding helmets, and the urban environment is clogged with traffic and highrise buildings. These provide the opening for later discussion with older children of the information given in the afterword: a succinct, hard-hitting outline of the exploitation of children in camel racing in the Gulf States of the Middle East, as well as some hopeful news of how attitudes are changing.

This may be a story in which winning is certainly not everything, but Erika Pal’s perfectly tuned story about Azad and his camel is itself a winner, whatever time of day you choose to read it.