Picture books can be a great way to practice inference skills and start class conversations about big topics.

Billy and the Beast by Nadia Shireen - LoveReading4Kids Billy and the Beast by Nadia Shireen - LoveReading4Kids

After a lifetime of doodling in the sidelines, Nadia decided to pay some attention to drawing and in 2007 was accepted onto an MA course in Children's Book Illustration at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. It's still all too unusual to see a brown girl star in such a brilliantly funny and very commercial picture book and Shireen has created Billy in fantastic style. My only observation is that, when reading it aloud, I was not sure whether or not to read the list of ingredients shown in the picture. Billy is being shown a very strong character who not only escaped from the beast but also helped her friends to escape as well.

The good people at Smash Hits didn’t fire her for doodling furry animals - instead they let her leave early to go to evening classes in illustration. year old daughter loved this - we've got Billy and the Dragon, but would love to see more Billy adventures soon please! Nadia was always destined for a career in illustration—as a child, she would doodle on her exercise books, while as a student she would doodle on her law degree notes. The illustrations are cute and bold colored, the characters are fun, I do think there could have been one more twist.

Billy and the Beast - Puffin Schools PICTURE BOOK INSPO: Billy and the Beast - Puffin Schools

Love the images, and love the Gruffalo-style there-and-back-again story with animals and onomatopoeic sounds. We’ve re-named Puffin Virtually Live so that it’s easier for new teachers to discover it as part of Puffin Schools and to acknowledge that the show now premieres on show day, rather than being streamed live.

As a trainee Primary Teacher, I find myself noticing how useful books might be in lessons, and this book has excellent examples for use in English lessons (particularly onomatopoeia, with 'crunched, stomped, etc'. What’s more, as always, Shireen’s illustrations conjure character with energy, and in gloriously stylish tones. I think that there is a strong underlying message here in the sense that we should always face our fears and we start doing that by talking. The content and ambition of the show remains the same: to give every pupil the opportunity to engage with authors and illustrators in their own classroom using the power of the internet. Then, when working as a journalist in London for pop music bible Smash Hits, she would doodle all the time on anything.