The Oxford General Practice Library (OGPL) Child health handbook is one of the newest additions to the increasingly crowded clinical handbook market. Following in the footsteps of the excellent Oxford Handbook of General Practice, the question is do we really need another pocket size reference book and can it offer anything new to the genre?

At first glance, it becomes apparent that while the general layout has a very familiar feel, the authors have endeavoured to make things more “user friendly” with large splashes of colour, a plethora of boxes, tables and flow charts …