It may be about cats, but it covers the whole of new arrivals and sibling rivalry beautifully. The little girl may think the kitten will be a nice new friend for Ginger, but Ginger’s look of horror says otherwise. Nevertheless, of course, peace comes – most of the time – not least through a shared love of cardboard boxes.
Charlotte Voake’s free and fluid pictures are so expressive. If you like cats or have a sibling, this is a book to fall in love with.
What a combination – Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake! Playsmiths together. A tale full of subtlety. Parents worried about bills, Rosie picking up lolly sticks to keep in her old cigar box. Things are tight. But imagination is not; it’s very free. Words and pictures riot across the pages. Lollysticks turn into Stickerino the magnificent…
Oliver Jeffers is the biz! He draws and paints with panache and pizazz. He has a properly idiosyncratic take on the world that makes good sense to children. If you have a penguin to take to the Antarctic, of course you are going to get your rowboat out of the cupboard. And of course, if…
Written and set in the nineteen-fifties, I’m not surprised it remains in print seventy years later. Barbara Sleigh writes deftly, weaving her plot as cunningly as a witch’s garland, and as discreetly. She manages to make magic both magic and ordinary. It fits convincingly into Rosemary’s world of quiet getting by in a flat with…
A simple joke, the dog who thinks his name is No, because it’s what everyone in the house calls him. Any child who has misunderstood how to help and in turn been misunderstood may feel for our well-meaning hero and draw comfort. They are not alone in the world: there are other misguided enthusiasts out…
This is one of the few books illustrated by Harold Jones still in print. It was a major undertaking, with nursery rhymes fitted into picture pages throughout. He said of his work, ‘A book is a complete unity. I always plan it from endpaper to endpaper and try to keep the spirit of the first…
Published in 1963, when it won first prize in Scandinavia for fiction for older readers, the telling of the tale has not outdated it, for it is a kind of timeless pilgrim’s progress, as well as an odyssey across Europe. David knows his name and, he sometimes feels, little else. A journey, then, of self-discovery….
