Item category 2: Picture books for older readers

'O Bandit Queen!' the bandits cried. 'Little horror! Poison weed! We'll give you everything a queen could ever need'. The bandits give their queen treasure, tigers, mischief and mayhem. But sometimes a little girl needs something more.

In a world built for Perfect Pets, Barnabus is a Failed Project, half mouse, half elephant, kept out of sight until his dreams of freedom lead him and his misfit friends on a perilous adventure. Deep underground beneath Perfect Pets, where children can buy genetically engineered 'perfect' creatur...

How did Batgirl become Batman's crime-fighting partner? Discover the story behind Barbara Gordon's journey from commissioner's daughter to superhero sidekick, including the source of her high-tech gadgetry. With action-packed illustrations and easy-to-follow text, these early reader books are per...

Even Green Lantern needs a pal. But how did B'dg, the Green Lantern of Space Sector 1014, become Hal Jordan's alien friend?

Jack loves beans - with everything! But his passion for his favourite snack has huge consequences in this tale of messy food fun, machinery mayhem and ingenious recycling. Can Jack and the bean machine save the day?

To the people of Bagley, beans are everything. They love farming them and drying them and cooking them and eating them. But to the young king of Bagley? Not so much. The king is fed up with beans. All he wants is for Bagley to finally be fun - and what's more fun than beanbags?

Banshees are supernatural Irish harbingers of doom, but where do they come from? The answer: they grow in pods on the prickly gorse bush. The sole job of a baby banshee, a 'bansheenie' as they are called, is to bond with a human. Once bonded, they know everything about that person. Most important...

Paddington Bear had travelled all the way from Darkest Peru when the Brown family first met him on Paddington station. Since then their lives have never been quite the same, for ordinary things become quite extraordinary when a bear called Paddington is involved.

Once there was a river flowing through a forest. The river didn't know it was capable of adventures until a big bear came along. But adventures aren't any fun by yourself, and so enters Froggy, Turtles, Beaver, Racoons, and Duck. These very different animals take off downstream, but they didn't k...

Young Beatrix Potter loves to draw animals. She has many pets whom she likes to paint - a frog, a salamander, a canary and even a hedgehog. But she doesn't have a guinea pig so she borrows her neighbour's, promising that no harm will come to the cuddly creature. After all, what could possibly go ...