Selling at the sale will also be another local company, Bob and Blossom.

Now I have to admit that Flyaway Katie by Polly Dunbar was not a children’s story that I or my children are familiar with.  I shall be rectifying that via a trip to the book shop pronto.

It really is such a beautiful story that captivated Monty and Blossom from start to finish. I had been slightly nervous at taking both the children to see a production while flying solo but I needn’t have worried. Everything was thought of to make it the easiest thing possible. There was a buggy shed to stow my wheels, a craft table to keep the little legged ones content while we waited to take our seats and food and drink available from The Hurley Burley bus café.

We take our seats and are transported by these fantastic puppets with comic timing and a soul that sucks you in. We start in Katie’s bedroom and she’s feeling a little grey. But not for long as we meet all the colourful characters along the way. My favourite was the caterpillar with the west country accent but my kids favourite was the bee. His buzzy ways had my two chortling away and clapping with glee.

The performance lasted no more than 30 minutes. Just right, any longer and we would have been pushing it with such a young audience. This length of time left us wanting more. More comedy costume additions for Katie and more folky toe tapping music for us to clap and sway and hum along to.

We were able to meet the fantastic puppets at the end of the performance which was a lovely touch and all the children were given pretty stickers which they wore with pride for the entire day.

My four year old Monty summed our experience up beautifully with this perfect little school boy esque sound bite:

‘’ I actually thought that the puppet show was going to be boring but it wasn’t .  It was so good I could hardly actually believe my eyes!’’

I love him. And we loved Fly Away Katie.

Review by Rebecca Metcalf, for Child Friendly Brighton & Hove

Brighton Fringe (5th – 27th May 2012) www.brightonfringe.org

Music, comedy and magic kept the kids entertained in this energetically informal and amusingly chaotic variety showcase. A rapid-fire format meant acts never overstayed their welcome, giving a little taster of each performer’s expertise. The show started with a clap-along blues guitar song which got the kids fired up, with lyrics modified to make them snigger.

Then we had two comedy acts – the standout was Craig Ricci Shaynak (also performing his ‘I Am Google’ in the Fringe). Rather than geek the kids out with his grown-up skit on technological absurdities, he went for a more mainstream appeal of collaboratively creating a movie voiceover of Happy Feet 9 to ingratiate himself with the younger set.

Finally we had a crowd-pleasing magic act that was slickly presented and left the kids wanting more – in fact they tried to steal some of the props!  My eight-year-old absolutely loved it, especially as she was chosen as the magiciann’s assistant. The show, replete with multiple stage invasions from some over-exuberant hecklers-in-training, whizzed past and was perfectly timed for child attention spans and demands.

Review by Leonie Taylor, for Child Friendly Brighton & Hove

Brighton Fringe (5th – 27th May 2012) www.brightonfringe.org

Dolphin Languages is a Brighton based language school looking for host families, to house their overseas students aged 13-17. The students come from Spain and Germany. Dolphin Languages would like to give parents in Brighton and Hove the opportunity to host students for 3 weeks during this summer (from 1st of July to 23rd of July 2012).

Host families will receive the following fees in return:

£115 per week for a half board

£90 per week for bed and breakfast

If you are interested in becoming a host family, please contact Dolphin Families on 01273 628625 or call in to their office on 9 Church Street, Brighton BN1 1US

www.dolphinlanguages.com

Stand-up comedy for kids, especially younger ones, may seem like a hard sell – there’s no razzamatazz when there’s just one man and a microphone. But James Campbell can entertain children, aged six and above, without props, costumes or songs. At his recent Brighton show, there were jokes about grown-ups sneaking rides on their kids’ scooters (with tips on how to crash to a stop), surreal asides about cows with fingers (‘You’re not scared of cows? You will be now’) and the devotion of dogs versus the cold calculation of cats (Campbell admits he’s biased; he’s allergic to moggies).

The adults in the audience were soon laughing along. My favourite gag was about couscous, with Campbell claiming, ‘I don’t want to eat anything I don’t have time to count’. My son fell about at the Wii/wee jokes and Campbell’s uncanny impressions of being a child. Actually, he comes across more like a cool older cousin who makes the kids laugh while charming the grown-ups. He can work the room, too – some of the funniest moments came when Campbell asked the kids in the audience to introduce themselves, then gently riffed off their input. So, the Brighton crowd had ‘made-up names’ and a bizarre willingness to eat vegetables. Who knew a joke about squeaky spinach could be so funny?

Review by Leonie Taylor, for Child Friendly Brighton & Hove

Brighton Fringe (5th – 27th May 2012) www.brightonfringe.org

www.thejamescampbell.com

Reviewed by Harper Taylor-Hanson (age 10)

” Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell are famous for their book series – The Edge Chronicles, Muddle Earth and lots of others – so I was very excited to see them as part of Brighton Festival. They were as funny as their books and just as exciting, with Chris making incredible and peculiar sketches throughout the talk (we even got a signed sketch to take home).

Paul and Chris met through their children, who went to the same nursery in Hove. They started off with Chris illustrating Paul’s rabbit and hedgehog children’s stories, because Paul’s initial illustrations had looked like potatoes! But after three books, Chris wanted to do something darker, so they wrote the first Edge Chronicle book, Beyond The Deepwoods. The idea of The Edge came from a map of a fantasyland in Chris’s sketchbook, which, for Paul, seemed to stand out from the rest of Chris’s pictures. The first creature made in Beyond The Deepwoods was the Banderbear, which came from another of Chris’s drawings.

After five more Edge books, they decided to create something slightly younger and funnier so Paul came up with the idea of Muddle Earth. Muddle Earth was such a great book that the BBC made a cartoon about it and asked them to write another; Muddle Earth Too. After writing this, Paul and Chris went back to doing more Edge Chronicles – and there are three more on the way, can’t wait. I highly recommend all of Paul and Chris’s books. ”

Young Critics Review – Child Friendly Brighton & Hove invited children to review the 26 Letters – Brighton Festival’s 4 day literary festival for children, 2012.

Reviewed by Max Outhwaite, aged 6

“It was great. I loved it. I liked the part where the hand came up the toilet. So, the man (Steven Butler, author) was funny. Chris Fisher did great pictures on the overhead projector, and we got paper and markers to draw pictures which was fun. I liked drawing the big pictures on the flip chart. The show was just the right length of time. You should go and see it.”

Young Critics Review – Child Friendly Brighton & Hove invited children to review the 26 Letters – Brighton Festival’s 4 day literary festival for children, 2012.

We’ll be using vegetables to create red, green and orange pasta and animal shapes to create some unique ravioli that you won’t find in the shops!

Suitable for ages:  8 – 13

Cost:   £15 (£20 for 2 children)

For more information and to book tickets:     info@cookerydoodledoo.net or call Katie on 07588692955

Website: http://cookerydoodledoo.com/events/freshpasta/

We’ll bake fresh yummy biscuits and get creative with edible glitter, sprays and sprinkles.

Great fun for ages 3-11 (and parents too!)

Cost:   £12 (£15 for 2 children)

To book tickets and to find out more, please email     info@cookerydoodledoo.net or call Katie on 07588692955

http://cookerydoodledoo.com/events/jubileecooking/

The theme of flowers will be continued this year again over the Carnival with lampposts, street furniture and performers being adorned with bouquets of flowers created in free Pre Carnival workshops. There will be opportunities aplenty to get involved with a variety of other pre Carnival workshops as well including, dance, stilt walking and costume making workshops.

The Kemp Town Carnival Association needs as much help as possible so if you would like to volunteer for either the Carnival day itself or to get involved in the many exciting fundraising events and workshops running up to carnival then please get in touch with the Carnival organisers: http://www.kemptowncarnival.com/index.php/volunteers