Early on in her picture book career, Helen Oxenbury teamed up with the dour Scots poet, musician and humourist Ivor Cutler. Perhaps best known today as the bus conductor in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, Cutler had carved out a unique position for himself in the 1960s as a cult entertainer for the Goons generation. … Continue reading
Whenever anyone asks me to recommend a book for their baby, there is one that immediately springs to mind. Ahead of the Bear Hunt, the very Hungry Catterpillar and even Rosie’s Walk comes So Much! Trish Cooke’s tale of a young mum and her baby’s seemingly ordinary day begins in a pleasingly low key manner: … Continue reading
With a retrospective of the artist Edward Ardizzone opening at the House of Illustration this week, I wanted to showcase one of his lesser known works – Jean Webster’s 1912 classic Daddy Long-Legs. Jean Webster was the grand-niece of Mark Twain; a relationship that suggests literary nepotism but was in fact fraught with difficulties. Her father had … Continue reading
It’s not often that I see my dad avidly reading a children’s book. He usually prefers something with a bit more espionage, or physics. But I came home recently to find him leafing through my copy of J.B.S Haldane’s My Friend Mr Leakey. ‘He was a very well known scientist you know?’ he told me … Continue reading
Pepper and Jam is the story of two oversized cats, the aptly named Longbody and his noisy brother Tractor. They live in an end of terrace house in Swindon with their humans, the social climbing Mrs Pepper and her son Reginald, who also provides the illustrations. When Mrs Pepper plans a holiday the cats do … Continue reading
Marianne is a twelve year old girl confined to bed for months with a debilitating illness. Tired but restless she plunders a keepsake box handed down from her great grandmother to her mother and finds amongst the shiny trinkets a nice pencil, ‘It was one of those pencils that are simply asking to be written or drawn with.’ Continue reading
‘It rained every day since Grandma arrived in London. Every single day. Not the nice sort of fat rain than makes gentle plopping noises on your rain hat, but the nasty thin sort that runs down your nose and the tops of your Wellington boots and makes your hair stick out all over the place.’ … Continue reading
In 2007 Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill published The Black Dossier, the third volume in their comic book series ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen‘. Spanning an alternative 20th Century the League are a group of government agents based on characters from Victorian genre fiction. In The Black Dossier the league square up to a very unreconstructed spy called ‘Jimmy Bond’. But they’re aided by an even more controversial figure. Continue reading
This week I discovered a lost classic. Lionel Davidson’s Under Plum Lake is a strange and unsettling book that draws you in and keeps you there until the end. Then it keeps you there some more, and like the book’s hero Barry, I’m not sure if that’s such a good thing. The lysergic splurge of … Continue reading
Back in May I wrote about a fabulous, strange old book about two warring nations, one fat and one thin, who live far beneath the surface of our own world. Originally published in the inter-war years, Fattypuffs and Thinifers simultaneously offers comment on the Great War and a warning of the war that was yet … Continue reading
We're off for some Lucy and Tom style frolics at the seaside. See you in september with some fantastical libraries and out of this world adventures for younger readers. Continue reading
Today is tygertale’s 1st birthday. By happy coincidence (and much more importantly) it is also Judith Kerr’s 90th birthday. To celebrate I went out and bought a copy of her autobiographical new book Creatures. ‘That book is simply gorgeous‘ the charming young man behind the till in Foyles rightly pointed out as I went to … Continue reading
Being a massive Alice and Narnia nut I’m a sucker for any book that takes me through a crack in our world and into another, much stranger place. It’s the ultimate fantasy device, playing directly into children’s imaginative games. Revisiting these stories later in life is a direct reminder of what it felt like to … Continue reading
I’m having a big dragon-fest at work recently, which has given me a good excuse to trawl some of my favourite picture book beasties, plus some brand new ones. In the 1960s Tove Jansson, best known for creating her very own Moomin shaped folk legends, turned her hand to illustrating some British children’s classics including … Continue reading
There can’t be many children’s books that explain exactly how to get served in the pub. ‘If you want ordinary beer you ask for “bitter”. Usually there are also two kinds of ale, mild ale and old ale (which also called Burton), and you can order a mixture of any two, such as “old and mild” or “bitter and Burton”.’ Got that kids? Mine’s a Burton and Red Bull. Continue reading
I love a good cover version. Twist and Shout by the Beatles. Light my Fire by Mae West. Tragedy by Same Difference. In publishing it’s a bit easier to ‘make a book your own.’ You don’t have to go to the trouble of actually re-writing the bugger, just pop it in a new jacket and … Continue reading
My boyfriend gave me an apple My boyfriend gave me a pear My boyfriend gave me a kiss on the lips and threw me down the stairs Kids these days just don’t know how to play. Not properly. Unless they’re jabbing away at a DS or doing some supervised wet felting, they simply stare into … Continue reading
I had meant to write a piece about one of my favourite artists, Edward Gorey and his work of the Treehorn trilogy. But on re-reading I remembered there was something else that I really loved about the books – the exquisite writing and boundless imagination of their author, Florence Parry Heide. In the Shrinking of Treehorn … Continue reading
I’ve never been a big fan of pirates. Treasure Island and all that, it bores me. The plank, the buried treasure, the ‘me-harties’, the cabin boy, the bloody parrots – yawn. You’d’ve thought that would have put me off writing a book about pirates. You’d be wrong. There are a few great big exceptions to … Continue reading
So, I thought I’d start this blog off with a post about Maurice Sendak who died last month. It goes without saying that he was bloody marvellous and it’s a great loss to the world etc. But scanning through the obituaries you’d be mistaken for thinking he only produced two books, Where the Wild Things … Continue reading
