Growing up in the 80s and 90s, one of my favourite children’s books was The Jolly Postman by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, in which our postie delivers letters to fairytale characters, including a funny apology from Goldilocks to the three bears.
The book’s clever design means every other page is an envelope, inside which are actual letters.
The next best thing after receiving a real letter through the post, is reading one in a book. In such a state of fuzzy warm nostalgia, I approached Sharon King-Chai’s Snail Mail, the tale of Sam the sea snail, whose surfing brother Tiger goes round the world to catch the perfect wave and sends Sam postcards of all his adventures in Brazil, America, India, Japan and France.
Each postcard teaches Sam (and children) a little about the country (including how to say hello) and inspires Sam to have mini adventures in his rock pool.
The postcards are too tightly stuck in their envelopes for little hands to easily pull out, but the illustrations and the tale are charming – and will surely encourage little ones to write postcodes from their travels.
