Delighting her young readers with five Snippy the Crab adventures, author Alison Miles uses the oldest form of story-telling – narrative poetry- to fantastic effect.
The author’s fun, exciting and dynamic tales come complete with vivid full-page illustrations and are bursting with rhyme and language that challenges their young readers and brings added depth to the reading/listening experience. The series is aimed at four- to eight-year-olds and each book is longer in length than most picture books (38-42 pages).
Penned with an understanding that not all children are ready to embark on chapter books at the same time, the author of this beautifully constructed and vocabulary enhancing series is making hugely positive ripples in the literary world. Not only has Snippy’s first adventure – Snippy the Crab’s Deep-Sea Adventure - been acquired by the National Poetry Library but having had no formal training as an illustrator and only drawing on her iPad since 2019, Alison Miles has been nominated as one of Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2021 accepted artists.
Delighting children and adults alike, a bright future lies ahead for Snippy the Crab and his talented creator.
Snippy The Crab’s adventure series charts the tales of a plucky little crab who gets into all kinds of scrapes when he decides to explore the world beyond his rock pool. These exciting and heart-warming tales bowl along with rollicking rhymes and a rich and inspiring vocabulary. Snippy learns a lot about the human world on his travels and children who dive into Snippy’s world are introduced to the wonders of nature under the sea and above it! Snippy’s tales can get a tiny bit scary because he does find himself in some very strange places — like stuck on the lens of a Triton submarine in an undersea cave; stranded high above the beach in a nest of hungry seagull chicks; and dancing the tango underneath a bandstand in the middle of a park! Lovable, kind Snippy makes friends wherever he goes especially when he finds himself in trouble. He is also very brave and turns his claws to heroic deeds when others need help.
The Snippy the Crab series is available to purchase on Amazon:
Snippy The Crab’s Deep-Sea Adventure
Snippy The Crab’s High-Flying Adventure
Snippy The Crab’s Restaurant Caper: A longer length picture book for the developing reader
Snippy The Crab's Laboratory Lockdown
Snippy The Crab — Caught on Camera!
About the author:
Alison Miles is a self-confessed lover of the seaside, of poetry and of art and the combination of these passions led her to create the Snippy The Crab Adventure Series of rhyming picture books. She loved the sounds of words as a child and the inner dynamism of their rhythms, whether she understood them or not. She was brought up in Devon and on the Gower Peninsular in Wales where she spent many happy hours exploring the beautiful beaches and rock pools.
Her professional life has been as a music educator and violinist working with children of all ages. As a child, she loved the poems of Hillaire Belloc, Spike Milligan and Edward Lear and her teaching has reinforced her belief that both rhythm and sound engage our senses in a fundamental way.
She has no formal training in art and taught herself to draw when she bought an iPad in 2019. Snippy the Crab books have sumptuous, richly coloured design to appeal to young eyes and minds. In 2021 Alison was delighted to be selected as an ‘accepted artist’ at The Bologna Children’s Book Fair Illustrators’ Competition. Her preferred picture books growing up were ‘Patrick’ by Quentin Blake and ‘Madeline’ by Ludwig Bemelmans. Other inspirations for her illustrations are those paintings which tell a story such as Alfred Elmore’s ‘On The Brink’ and ‘The Last of England’ by Ford Maddox Brown.
Alison feels privileged to be engaged in one-to-one work with children of all ages and is constantly amazed by their eclectic, free-roaming, inquisitive and fantastical minds — qualities which should be championed and encouraged. Education, she feels, should be broad, inspiring and above all creative since the creative arts are a cogent unifying force through which all people can express themselves and find resonance and solace. She hopes the Snippy The Crab series of books will contribute in some small way to that wonderful adventure which is common to us all — childhood.
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