What About Me? Said The Flea

By Lily Murray and Richard Merritt

What it’s about?

When a little girl sits down at her desk one day to write a story, she struggles to find her inspiration …

Luckily for her there’s a whole host of potential picture-book characters who want to be the star of her story and make their cases convincingly. There’s the magical, proud unicorn with sparkly hooves and a glittery horn. There are the big, burly bears hosting a picnic, the loveable llamas in pyjamas, the stylish sloth, the lion, the penguins, and even a roar-some, claw-some dinosaur …

But, unnoticed by the little girl, an even littler flea is hopping and jumping around, hoping to be the one she chooses to write a story about. “What about me?” it cries. With all the big characters and commotion, will the flea ever be noticed?

Set in fun, rhyming couplets, What About Me? Said the Flea celebrates the power of imagination, determination, and the good things that come in teeny tiny packages.

What we think:

We loved The Dinosaur Department Store which we review on the blog last year, so we we super excited to get a chance to be a part of the blog tour for What About Me? Said the Flea.

And we were not disappointed.

This is such a fun, colourful book.

Sophia is looking for inspiration for a story and an array of cheeky and persuasive characters try and convince that they should be the star of the show.

There’s a unicorn that does rainbow poo – any mention of poo is guaranteed to get a laugh from my 5 year old, smug bears and arrogant lions. Our favourites we the attention grabbing troop of penguins and the sloth because, well he’s a sloth!

In the background is a tiny, squeaky flea trying to be noticed. He’s fun to spot- sometimes he’s obvious but other times he’s peeking in at the bottom of the pictures over-looked in all the chaos.

The illustrations in this book are just fabulous- there’s so much detail and humour.

The story is told in rhyme with some nice vocabulary choices to keep old readers interested. The rhyming couplets and regular rhythm means that after reading it a couple of times the Little Monster was able to join in with the story.

He loved when he realised that all of the characters we her toys and she was imagining their personalities and how they would behave as this is something that he does too. It shows kids how powerful their imaginations can be.

We have read this book dozens of times already and definitely recommend it to fans of rhyming picture books.

About the authors:

Lily Murray (Author) Lily grew up in the wilds of snowy nowhere, spending much of her time talking to animals and making up stories. She has continued to do this in her adult life, and now writes both fiction and non-fiction books for children.

Her titles include big books about dinosaurs (Dinosaurium), rhyming books about dinosaurs (The Dinosaur Department Store) and stories about escapee hot dogs (Hello, Hot Dog!). Her latest title for Buster Books (Calm Down, Cooper!) features a very naughty parrot and a conscientious puppy.

Follow Lily on Instagram and Twitter @lilymurraybooks.

Richard Merritt (Author) Born and bred in North London, Richard Merritt has been an illustrator for 15 years after graduating from Central Saint Martin’s college of Art and Kingston University.

Richard has worked with many book and editorial publishing houses, design groups, advertising agencies and more, on lots of varied projects, from children’s books and packaging to magazines and costume illustration for film. He now illustrates children’s picture books, including the hugely successful The Dinosaur Department Store.

Thank you to Love Books Tours for inviting us on this fantastic blog tour and the publishers for our gifted copy.