Ajay and his friends are the abandoned orphans of Mumbai station and children of the nearby slums. He is a boy with ambition and a mission and nothing and no one is going to stop him. Watch out world, here comes Ajay! His mother’s pen is all he has of her, and with it he…
One of the great writer / artist collaborations, Axel Scheffler’s simultaneously down-to-earth and slightly dotty illustrations complement Julia Donaldson’s stomping rhythms and plonking good rhymes and together they carry the reader along with great good cheer, safely past fears and busting a few shibboleths on the way. Here we have a school for dragons and…
Light-hearted and touching at the same time, the story of the frog who becomes a Broadway hit dancing with Fred Astaire springs from the imagination of a tired mum to entertain her son. If we chose, we can realise that this tale of Great Aunt Gertrude who so nearly drowned herself when her captain husband…
There comes a time when a child realises she knows something, maybe lots, that her parents don’t. Their paths become distinct from one another. Here, with pictures like chalky lithographs and with creatures a little reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s wild things, Melissa Castillon guides us and Winnie through storms to build a bridge between the…
If anyone was destined to create a book helping children to know the futility of war, and to do so without judging those who fight in them, it was Michael Foreman. Of his four uncles three died in the First World War and one, called Christmas, died of wounds on the first Christmas Day after…
I came across this book when I was about 10. I remember finding it on the classroom library shelf (I think second shelf down and about a third in from the left – the memory is that vivid!) and feeling that it was in some way important. It was the first story I read which…
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…
Arthur Ransome breaks so many rules – and brilliantly. If you are not a sailor you find the book littered with terms you don’t know, many unexplained, detailed descriptions of estuaries and compass bearings, children who much of the time seem to have little inner life, a title that reveals the whole plot; and yet,…
What better book to start than Clown. The only word in the whole book is the title, but Quentin Blake masterfully creates a moving story of loss and separation transformed into reunion and new friends, all through Clown’s inventive and determined loyalty. Juggling potatoes to charm a crying baby, moments after being hurled in through…
