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Anyone who doesn't have a child addicted to CBeebies (the 'early years' BBC channel) may not have heard of Q Pootle 5. I've become rather fond of him. He's an affable little green alien who lives on the planet Okiedokie, and potters around having gentle adventures with his alien buddies.

Having seen the show so many times, when I spotted this book amongst the large box of kids books we were given, I was rather chuffed. I'm a sci-fi geek, and there's just not enough good sci-fi for toddlers!

Unfortunately, I'm kind of disappointed with this one - and it's not really the book's fault - but it no longer sits right with the TV series.

Nick Butterworth initially wrote two Q Pootle 5 books, and then went on to develop the TV series. The TV series is massively more fleshed out and... different to the books. It's a coherent little universe - and this book now kind of jars with that.

In this book, Pootle crash lands on Earth. One of his rocket boosters is busted, so he goes looking for a replacement. He asks a frog (because the frog is green) and some birds (but they don't need rockets to fly) - and then a cat called Colin, who lets him use his empty tin of cat food as a new rocket booster. With the spaceship repaired, Pootle flies off to his friend's party and at the end we get a nice, big, fold-out pic of the party.

The pictures are crisp and lovely and my boy, Fin, loves the big swooping words that go right across the page at the start for when the spaceship crashes - he's a fan. The story/language was OK, but a bit so-so (I prefer kids books with rhyme, or at least funny words, funny voices, etc).

As far as Fin is concerned, that's all there is to it.

But I can't help doing a compare and contrast with the TV show. In the book, Pootle has gone to Earth. On TV, Earth is never mentioned. In the book, Pootle repairs his spaceship with a tin can. On TV, the components for the ships are all sensible spare parts. In the book, Pootle is going to a party for Z Pootle 6. On TV, no such character exists.

It's not a bad book, but it lacks most of what makes the TV show good, so fans are bound to be a little dissapointed. It's easy to see how the basic concept presented here helped inspire the show, but I think it's fair to say that if Nick Butterworth were to write a Q Pootle 5 book now, it would be very different. Unfortunately, that is the book I hoped to share with my son.

After this I read: The Big Sleep