Make a friend for life in Alfie! This classic picture book from award-winning author Shirley Hughes - the first in the hugely popular Alfie series - is now available with a wonderful CD read by actor Roger Allam.

Unbearably exciting. Our four-year-old demanded a second reading Daily Echo 20041008 There's just something so reassuring about Hughes' colourful drawings of the day-to-day activities that you know inside out ... words and pictures merge seamlessly ... Hughes is a magical storyteller with an instinctive understanding of the mind of the pre-schooler ... she makes the ordinary extraordinary Guardian 20050629 Shirley Hughes is a national treasure Text and artwork are both delightful and sympathetically balanced British Book News

Shirley was born in West Kirby, near Liverpool, and studied fashion and dress design at Liverpool Art School, before continuing her studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford. She then embarked on a career as a freelance illustrator in London, where she still lives today. She illustrated other writers' work, including Noel Streatfeild, Alison Uttley, Ian Seraillier, Margaret Mahy and notably Dorothy Edwards's My Naughty Little Sister series. Shirley began to write and draw her own picture books when her children were young. Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger and the Alfie series.