The Best Children’s Books of the year featured war, a walking house, boats (so many boats), rockets, a rockstar, an unfortunate ape, a lost magician, mermaids and more war. This is 2018. The Day War Came by Nicola Davies illustrated by Rebecca Cobb Hard to choose a favourite book from Nicola Davies in a year …
You will remember the end of Carlo Collodi’s Adventures of Pinocchio, after the antics with the nose, the circus and the whale, the Blue Fairy grants the wooden child his wish and turns him into a boy. But as we discover in Lane Smith’s sort of sequel, it wasn’t quite happily ever after. The fairy … Continue reading
When we last met Edward Gorey at Christmas he was recounting the season’s Twelve Terrors with John Updike. The bright lights and gaiety of the season aren’t perhaps the natural territory for the master of the macabre, so I was intrigued to come across this colourful looking addition to the Christmas canon. The Christmas … Continue reading
Welcome to tygertale’s fourth (FOURTH!!) advent calendar. Each day I’ll be revealing a christmas or winter themed children’s book ranging from seasonal favourites, through obscure vintage finds to brand new holiday classics. There’s a large mug of mulled cider waiting for me at the end of this.
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As we’re about to find out it’s been a great year for new Christmas books, but as Chris Riddell says on the cover, Refuge is the most important. It begins with the familiar nativity tale, but told from the donkey’s point of view. The text makes no mention of Jesus, Mary or Joseph. Instead … Continue reading
2015 has been a year of literary pilgrimages for me, beginning in late Spring with a visit to the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden. This small but superbly designed exhibition is built from the ephemera of his solitary working life, preserved and restaged with something approaching religious awe. The centrepiece is his entire shed, … Continue reading
Growing up I was always drawn to fiction, the more fantastical and unbelievable the story the better. So it’s been interesting to see the tastes and interests of my own children develop over the past few years. In the case of my son it’s been a journey of discovery. Unless it features a man in … Continue reading
With his new sci-fi epic Philip Reeve has performed a similar leap of the imagination to the one he made with his Mortal Engines series. In Railhead the earth is a distant memory, its former inhabitants now spread across the far reaches of the solar system. The ingenious twist here is that instead of moving between … Continue reading
I’ve loved scary stories since I first learned to say ‘boo’ to a goose, and have done my level best to introduce my kids to the pleasures of a good bit of fear. We like to begin the season’s thrills with a pilgrimage to the village of Lacock and the house where Harry Potter lost … Continue reading
There was a fun exchange on Twitter last week under the #PBNatter hashtag about scary picture books. The special guest was Jose Domingo, whose comic and game book hybrid Pablo & Jane and the Hot Air Contraption you really must seek out. He mentioned a favourite ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ style book called The Castle … Continue reading
This week a book that probably did save my life. One of my mum’s favourite stories about my childhood is the moment when dad came home to discover her standing at the top of the stairs brandishing her screaming baby. ‘I can’t stand it any more!’ she screamed, threatening to chuck me at him. Continue reading
It’s a great pleasure to welcome Beatrice Alemagna and hear about the books that shaped her as a reader and helped make her a creator of unique picture books. Martin Salisbury singles her out for praise in his selection of 100 Great Children’s Picture Books writing that her ‘constant urge to experiment – graphically and conceptually … Continue reading
Here’s a book and an author that deserve to be far better known outside of their native Taiwan. Jimmy Liao has been producing lavishly illustrated picture books since the late nineties selling over five million copies worldwide. For Western readers, think of Brian Selznick’s books, but coloured in and without all that annoying text to … Continue reading
Watching images of humans piling up on the borders and shores of Calais, Hungary and Greece these past few months I’ve struggled to communicate to my children the scale of the situation faced by these refugees. Facts and figures aren’t enough to convey the human tragedy behind the pictures we were witnessing. As with all … Continue reading
After the unforgettable Rooftoppers, comes The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell, easily my most anticipated book of the year. ‘Once upon a time, a hundred years ago there was a dark and stormy girl’, it begins. With echoes of the Brothers Grimm and the work of Snoopy, this is a book that already feels like a classic. … Continue reading
Ed Vere is back with a new series of picture books about a scrap of a black kitten called Max. The second book, Max at Night, was published this month in which the kitten turns superhero, fearlessly prowling the city at night. Ed’s picture books draw on classic comic book action and have bold graphic design elements, so I was interested to find out about the books that shaped him as an author. Continue reading
The first book in of my list of betterment is fittingly a story about telling stories. I Capture the Castle was written by Dodie Smith whilst exiled in California, in ‘a fever of nostalgia for England’. Continue reading
There’s fierce competition out there, but I think Emily Hughes is the most exciting new artist making picture books today. Her first book Wild came out in 2013 and became an instant classic. It’s about a feral child who could out-wild Max from Where the Wild Things Are, her home a living, breathing natural world. … Continue reading
In the first report from my comic book club we talk about Edgar P. Jacobs’ Blake and Mortimer adventure, The Yellow ‘M’. I discovered Jacobs recently, as Hergé’s creative partner on some of his classic Tintin adventures. Always in search of a series that might match up to Tintin, I came to the Adventures of Blake and Mortimer with high hopes… Continue reading
Spurred on by her success with the Shrinking of Treehorn in the early 1970s Florence Parry Heide sought to create a new story for Edward Gorey to illustrate. It took that books central idea and pushed it that bit further. It pushed it right over the edge. In Dillweed’s Revenge we meet a boy who like Treehorn is … Continue reading
In the post Harry Potter age readers have become used to a dizzying number of children’s books which inevitably become series. Title after title appears year upon year, as surely as the tide pushes the sea onto the shore. They have their day in the sun and are washed away when the next wave hits. I’m … Continue reading
As he workedt on his Luther Arkwright epic, Bryan Talbot wasn’t the only one conducting comic book experiments with steampunk. Over at 2000 AD (home of Judge Dredd) the daddy of modern British comics Pat Mills had begun a strip called Nemesis the Warlock, a collaboration with artist Kev O’Neill. It was an experiment in … Continue reading
David Lucas is a picture book maker in the classic mould. He works with simple shapes and beautiful decorative patterns to create stories that have a timeless feel. His storytelling is deeply rooted in fairy tale and fable, communicating simple but profound truths about our world all delivered with a sly sense of humour. But … Continue reading
Written between 1978 and 1989 Luther Arkwright can lay claim to being one of the very first, fully realised Steampunk novels. The retro futurist genre can be seen everywhere nowadays, in children’s books like Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines books and comic book franchises like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but Talbot rarely receives much credit … Continue reading
Reading it again today I can see exactly what attracted me to this story. Tintin drags the increasingly eccentric Captain Haddock out of his family home on a mission down the Amazon and up the Peruvian Andes, where he hopes to to lift the Inca’s curse. Prisoners of the Sun is the perfect Tintin adventure, with a string of amazing action sequences and dramatic set pieces. Continue reading
Judging by the two picture books she has created for the über cool indie publisher Flying Eye, Rilla Alexander knows more than most about books to save your life. Her first, the boldly titled The Best Book in the World explores the incredible benefits of living a life spent with with your nose buried in … Continue reading
Like many people I returned to reading children’s books as an adult, through J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. This inevitably lead me to Philip Pullman, and then a little later to a writer who I think deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines quartet showed just how mind expanding children’s … Continue reading
Having read Andy Miller’s ‘The Year of Reading Dangerously’, a book in which he changes his life by reading fifty classic books, I’ve been forced to take a long hard look at my own reading habits. Like most people I am not entirely honest about the books I read. Sometimes it’s just easier to say … Continue reading
In The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life, Andy Miller takes a long hard look at the books we read and the books that we say we read. Realising that the closest he has come to reading a book for pleasure since the birth of his … Continue reading
As a child, along with books, the other essential thing in my life was my top loading cassette recorder with its library of half recorded songs from the top 40. I also had in my collection a handful of ‘listening and reading’ story cassettes which played till they stretched, warped and unravelled inside the machine. … Continue reading
In 1969 the BBC made the surprising decision that what a nation of children, entranced by the real life drama of the moon landings needed was a space series made by two men in a cow shed in Kent. Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin had, up till that point, carved a career out of handmade … Continue reading
There’ve been a spate of belated children’s book sequels lately – Alan Garner’s been back to Brisingamen and Judith Kerr’s followed up The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Now Pat Hutchins has brought out the sequel to one of my very favourite picture books, her perfect debut story Rosie’s Walk. But Where, oh Where, is … Continue reading
A is for Alderley Edge. Throughout his life Alan Garner has drawn on the landscape and legends of Alderley Edge, the place that has been home to his family for many, many generations. It has become more than just a dramatic backdrop though, its hills, rivers and most of all its stones have become the defining character of his writing, providing a link throughout his stories, and a connection with the deep history of the area. Continue reading
Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, fresh from reimagining the Norse sagas in cardboard moved on to the dark corners of the European folk tale for their next major venture, The Pogles. Viewers were invited into the woodland behind Firmin’s barnyard studio in the Kent countryside, where a family of centuries old tree dwelling small people … Continue reading
I sometimes ask my children when they sit reading the Beano of a Saturday morning, faces as straight as if they were contemplating the FTSE 100, whether they find the venerable comic funny? ‘Oh yes,’ they reply in all seriousness, ‘very funny.’ Yet no laughs are ever forthcoming. Keen to feed their interest in this … Continue reading
We’ve been spoiled with some amazing books about children’s books lately. First came the essential Oxford Companion by Daniel Hahn, with three and a half thousand perfectly encapsulated entries on the entire history of children’s literature. Now comes a far more selective publication by Martin Salisbury, professor of illustration at the Cambridge school of art. … Continue reading
The Puffin Club was the groundbreaking venture launched by editor Kaye Webb in 1967 that changed children’s books forever. The club broke down the barrier between authors and young readers, bringing them together at Puffin parties and in the pages of Puffin Post. Webb helped create the world our children our now lucky enough to inhabit, … Continue reading
I avoided the books of Alan Garner as a child. A 1970s Armada Lion edition copy of Elidor sat on my shelf, always taunting me. It might have been the threat of Tolkien-esque high fantasy suggested by its cover that put me off, or maybe, just maybe the sense of dread that permeated its pages … Continue reading
One of his earliest published pieces, The Mildenhall Treasure is a rare example of Roald Dahl as reporter. The author’s preface to the story sets the scene beautifully: One morning in 1946 Dahl is at the breakfast table in his mother’s home reading the newspaper when his eye is caught by the story of Roman … Continue reading
Home, is the long awaited first solo title by Carson Ellis, the American illustrator and co-creator of the Wildwood books. It’s a subject that’s close to her heart – writing on the Picture Book Makers blog she says, ‘I love to draw homes because I love architecture. I love drawing buildings and all their angles … Continue reading
It all started in 1986. Having finally outgrown the Beano, tired of game books and read all the scant titles available for teenagers, my eye was caught by something remarkable at the newsagents. ‘Zip it creep,’ said a woman who looked like Debbie Harry surrounded by hell’s own army, with her gun aimed right at … Continue reading
It’s been twenty years since Philip Pullman published Northern Lights, the first part of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Since then the books have become classics and are responsible for kickstarting the current boom in children’s publishing. Northern Lights has also spawned a movie adaptation, stage play and a two further novellas set in the … Continue reading
‘In the lands of the North, where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long the men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale…’ So began every episode of the Saga of Noggin the Nog, an animated TV series … Continue reading
1823 is where it really began for illustrated children’s books in Britain; with the first publication of tales from the Brothers Grimm in English, illustrated by George Cruikshank – a man who had found fame drawing pictures of the Prince Regent blowing off. There had been publications for children before Grimms’ Fairy Tales; publishers … Continue reading
I’ve been having a bit of a Beatles week, listening my way through their records and revisiting their films. All of which provided the backdrop against which I read two recent picture books by the Superhairies – the creative team of artist Angus Mackinnon and writer James Thorp. The Lobster, Weasel, Puffin, Unicorn, Baboon, Pig … Continue reading
In 1982 Maurice Sendak was interviewed by the BBC’s arts documentary series Omnibus. ‘The highly reclusive writer’ had just completed designs for a production of Profokiev’s opera, The Love of Three Oranges. He speaks candidly and widely about his life and career in children’s book illustration. The interview showcases Sendak‘s sharp mind and even sharper … Continue reading
A novelty tie in of a much loved children’s book normally means a poorly stitched soft toy stapled to the front cover, or perhaps a collection of screen grabs taken from a lacklustre animated movie with text written by somebody in the publicity department. In the case of the Fungus the Bogeyman: The Plop-Up Book, … Continue reading
We went out for one of our little new year’s traditions this morning, breaking the tedium of the New Year’s restock and raiding the supermarket shelves for cut price Annuals. Steering the children skilfully away from a Flappy Birds cash in, we came away with the old reliable Beano Book and a reprint of some … Continue reading
Let’s finish this third advent calendar where we began, with Dylan Thomas’s recollections of his childhood Christmas in Wales. ‘One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I … Continue reading
Like Kay Thompson’s Eloise or Astrid Lindgren’s Lotta in pig form, Olivia just wants to help with Christmas, to be involved. She also lacks any type of patience. Things must happen, NOW, and if they don’t she’ll make them happen. It’s the perfect cocktail for a non sentimental Christmas book that all children will be … Continue reading
I first became aware of Barbapapa a few years ago when visiting the children’s sock department of my local H&M. Assuming they were a piece of hip retro Swedish kitsch, my children spent the next couple of years hoofed in the blobby little shape shifters. Turns out Barbapapa is real 70s retro kitsch, which in … Continue reading
Christmas and comic book sci-fi don’t always go together that well. It’s there at the kitschier ends of the genre – ‘Happy Christmas Superdog. And thank you Wonder Woman, you’ve done a neat job turning my Fortress of Solitude into a winter wonderland.’ Or ‘Holy immaculate conception Batman.’ That sort of thing. There’s one notable … Continue reading
As a child I became a bit obsessed by the mythical sounding football match that took place in the trenches of the first world war when it featured in the video for Paul McCartney’s Pipes of Peace. Now, in the centenary year we’ve had Sainsburys flogging groceries off the back of it. But somehow, whether … Continue reading
‘It was Christmas Eve and twelve of the clock, when the message was heard, on the wind in the trees, on the air, underground and humming through wires and slipped into dreams.’ Can it Be True? follows the news of the birth of the miraculous child. From the blood beaked owl and the scurrying shrew … Continue reading
‘Jingle, jingle, jingle here. Jingle there. Jingle Christmas everywhere.’ Let’s step out of the cold and return to the New York Plaza hotel once more to spend Christmas with its most famous resident, six year old Eloise. If you’ve not met her before, she’s the part feral product of wealth and delegated parenting, who may … Continue reading
In previous years we’ve seen a modern update and a tactile app version, but this folksy 1980 edition takes us about as close as it is possible to the mid 19th century America of its author Clement Moore’s imagination. Tomie dePaola, author of the magic pasta pot adventures of Strega Nona, sets his version of … Continue reading
Tom Fobble’s Day is the last part in a quartet of books inspired by Alan Garner’s working class family, who lived at Alderley Edge, a hill of Arthurian legend in Cheshire. It is crafted with such symmetry and beauty that you gasp, just as much as its hero as he takes his maiden journey down … Continue reading
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a version of the Twelve Days of Christmas quite like this. George Buchanan takes the central premise and plays it out to its full comic potential. Set against the backdrop of a snowbound house straight out of the Good Life, we meet a young couple.Boy attempts to explain the … Continue reading
This 1964 Ladybird book explores practically every element of the festive period in a surprising amount of detail. N. F. Pearson reveals the origins of our best known customs, revealing the largely non Christian roots of the great winter blowout. It's the first Ladybird book written by Frank Hampson, the comic book genius behind Dan … Continue reading
The Church Mice series which began in the early 70s, reached the inevitable Christmas episode in 1980. It’s a bit like a made for TV adaptation of The Tailor of Gloucester starring Leonard Rossiter and the cast of Dad’s Army. Hard to think of something more of its era. The mice are out to party, … Continue reading
Tove Jansson knew a thing or two about merchandising. Like a one woman Nordic Disney she was, as early as the mid 50s selling handkerchiefs, piggy banks, dustbins, suspenders and marzipan Moomins. Although she did stop short of allowing a line of sanitary towels for young girls – the company wanted to brand them ‘Little … Continue reading
Here’s a book – in fact a series of books – that deserve to be much better known, at least in the UK. Ernest and Celestine, the creation of the Belgian author and artist Gabrielle Vincent, are a musical bear and his adopted daughter, a sensitive young mouse. It will appeal to anyone whose enjoys … Continue reading
Astrid Lindgren’s Lotta is a character every bit as strong as Pippi Longstocking, if not in body, then in sheer wilfulness. Think of her as a Swedish cousin of My Naughty Little Sister, or Lauren Child’s Lola (whose best friend is perhaps un-coincidentally also called Lotta). This series is aimed at a slightly younger … Continue reading
In Once Upon a Northern Night the French/ Canadian illustrator Isabelle Arsenault collaborates with writer Jean Pendziwol, who draws on her native Lake Superior and northern Ontario. Arsenault’s style is painterly but with a strong graphic design element that helps create artwork that take your far beyond the world in which they are set. It’s … Continue reading
After two years and 55 advent blog posts I'm finally get round to writing about Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman. I’ve kind of been avoiding the book. It's not because I don’t like it, but rather that I’ve always thought, what more is there to say about a book that everybody knows inside out and back … Continue reading
‘It was Christmas Eve. The children were excited, but mum was hot and Dad was cross. “Christmas is hard work,” said Dad. He wanted the children to help, but they didn’t want to. They were watching television.’ I flipping love the Oxford Reading Tree books. The never ending series of ‘learn to read’ series by … Continue reading
December: ‘This, as you know is the month when two good things happen. The term ends and Christmas comes.’ In the last year of his life Roald Dahl wrote a diary of the changing seasons around his home in Great Missenden, intertwined with memories from his youth and spiky observations of the world around him. … Continue reading
W is for Warsaw. ‘Neither Germans nor communists will keep me from a fish steak this Christmas Eve.’ ‘What does German look like?’ Lucja asked. ‘Like a communist’, Grandpa Feliks said crossly. ‘But with better boots.’ If you’re after an original, heartwarming Christmas book without the usual turkey or trimmings, then look no further than … Continue reading
There are certain smells and sounds that can transport you straight back to childhood. For me paint and pencil textures do exactly the same thing – Shirley Hughes deep nostalgic hues, Quentin Blake’s busy, youthful lines and perhaps deepest of all the work of John Burningham. While Mr Gumpy’s Outing captures all the heat and … Continue reading
If you’ve ever wondered where Santa fits in to the whole commercialisation of Christmas debate: Working class hero or corporate stooge? Then One Thousand Christmas Beards is the book for you. Roger Duvoisin, author of Petunia’s Christmas, brings us a Santa who is both befuddled and enraged by the festive jamboree. The objects of his … Continue reading
Welcome to tygertale’s third (THIRD!) advent calendar. Each day I’ll be revealing a christmas or winter themed children’s book ranging from seasonal classics, through obscure vintage finds to brand new holiday favourites. Continue reading
In Snow we meet a boy and his grandad as they prepare for a day out in the snow. As the boy impatiently tries to get out of the door, his grandad understands that a little delayed gratification, particularly at Christmas time, is sometimes the best thing. The boy is tortured by the sight of … Continue reading
We all love receiving a good book at Christmas, particularly one with a heart warming message full of goodwill and the spirit of the season. Pity then the children of the 19th century, who instead of cosying up on the sofa with mummy, daddy and the Snowman were sent packing to their draughty nursery with … Continue reading
In the ‘difficult’ final Moomin novel, Tove Jansson takes the audacious step of entirely excising her core cast, focusing instead on a disparate group visitors who gather at the family’s home, but find them missing. It was a move that didn’t exactly go down well with readers at the time; Moominvalley in November was as … Continue reading
As Ella Bailey said earlier this week, there are few better ways to celebrate Halloween than with a bit of Edward Gorey. Thia year I have taken the brave step of discovering what dreadful things await me, as foretold by the Fantod Pack, a deck of Gorey designed Tarot cards. The cards are interpreted by … Continue reading
In No Such Thing a girl called Georgia notices that things keep going missing in her beautifully appointed home. Her brother, cat and the old lady across the way are all in the frame. But despite Georgia’s rational protestations, perhaps there’s another explanation – ghosts. I asked Ella Bailey, author of this stylish halloween treat … Continue reading
What do you do after you’ve created the greatest picture book of all time? It’s a question only Maurice Sendak could answer. In between his two great triumphs – Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen he turned to his two great inspirations, the fairy tale and his dog Jennie. The resulting … 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
You can’t beat a good flood. Ever since Noah got fed up with the rotten weather it has provided inspiration for countless end of the world stories. From Pat Hutchins’ The House That Sailed Away to J.G Ballard’s Drowned World, the end of the world as maritime adventure narrative has been a compelling one. The … Continue reading
The Moomins and I have been on our holidays. Not on the Riviera, but to Cornwall and the Eden Project. Paper Moomintroll, Little My, Snuffkin and the Hattifatteners travelled with us from the sunflower soaked fields of southern France to the bountiful rain forests of Malaysia, before encountering their ‘ancestors’ in deepest Africa. Tove Jansson … Continue reading
K is for the island of Klovharu. Tove Jansson would have been 100 this week, an event that provoked a huge outpouring of affection. Much of this has to do, of course, with her timeless Moomin stories, but there’s another part of her life, an idea, that has proven to be just as enticing to … Continue reading
I’m a big fan of the new Penguin Classics cover for the 50th anniversary adult edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But judging by the reaction on twitter and the media at large, I may well be in a minority of one here. The illustrator Sarah McIntyre has already put up a good defence … Continue reading
P is for Paris. This is one of the most unusual children’s books you’ll ever read. Some might say it’s more than a children’s book; a piece of micro modernism to file alongside James Joyce’s Ulysses or a junior Bout de Soufflé. Zazie dans le Métro is all these things, it is also the sort … 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
‘Lyra barged open the door, dragged her rickety chair to the window, flung wide the casement, and scrambled out. There was a lead-lined stone gutter a foot wide just below the window, and once she was standing in that, she turned and clambered up over the rough tiles until she stood on the topmost ridge … Continue reading
‘I must now regretfully become one of those unpopular giants who tells you WHAT TO DO and WHAT NOT TO DO. This is something I have never done in any of my books. I have been careful never to preach, never to be moralistic and never to convey any message to the reader.’ I confess … Continue reading
‘It was so appallingly awful… Snuffkin overslept after a party and didn’t turn up at all, the lighting was all to hell, some of the props were missing and everyone gave a feeble performance.’ Not a review of Polka Theatre’s wonderful new production, Moominsummer Madness, but Tove Jansson’s own verdict on the dress rehearsal … Continue reading
One of the current Batman storylines has seen the Dark Knight travelling the world in search of his son’s corpse. The former Robin, Damian Wayne has been murdered by his clone brother and dug up by his evil grandfather and is being dunked in every life restoring Lazarus pit from Gotham to Timbuktu. But a … Continue reading
‘Even if Einstein thought it was theoretically possible to travel in time, he never proved it, and if all the minds at the great universities haven’t managed to do it yet, then the likelihood of a 1920’s bungalow managing to invent a time machine, unaided, is very, very small. Time travel is far too complicated … Continue reading
There’s a lot of horror in Tove’s work, Grokes, Hattifatteners and in the psychological short story A Tale of Horror (1962), monstrous Little My. ‘That girl… you’d never believe… I’m not going back there, not in a thousand years,” the Whomper continued savagely. “She tricked me! she told such stories! She makes people sick with her lies!’ Continue reading
I’ve only had one recurring dream in my life. It’s quite hard to explain, as these things often are, but it involves me flying, or rather floating, like Alice down the rabbit hole, through some sort of shaft. Sometimes things go rather smoothly and I swoop and saw. Other times I’ll be flailing about, crashing … Continue reading
OK some serious SPOILERS coming up, but it's hard to write about this book without mentioning the big reveal in this 1977 classic school story by Gene Kemp. Following on from last week's piece that touched on gender labelling in children’s literature, here is a book that challenges readers’ expectations of girls and boys roles … Continue reading
There's been a lot of to do lately about the negative effects of gender labelling in children's books – things like the Sally Sparklebuns: Star Baker series for girls or the Barry Strongbones Football Academy books for boys. These things exist for a very good reason – kids lap 'em up and parents for the … Continue reading
‘Tell me something, are you one of those people who is prevented from doing great art because they draw comic strips?’ In 1978 Tove Jansson published a short story called The Cartoonist. It deals with a young artist who gets a job at a newspaper drawing a long running comic strip about a round, blue … Continue reading
Voici Charlie. Bonjour, Charlie! Bonjour, bonjour et re-bonjour. In 1967 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was published in France for the first time. As I mentioned in my previous article this was nearly a full year before any British publisher thought it worthy of publication. It came with brand new illustrations by Michel Siméon the … Continue reading
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the most important children's book of all time. Not his best, and not my favourite but definitely the most important. It's the book's fiftieth anniversary this year so I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain why it's so damn IMPORTANT, and while I’m at it showcase some of … Continue reading
There are some children’s books I feel slightly uncomfortable reading. Not because I’m embarrassed to be reading a children’s book per se, but because I’m so far from the intended readership I feel a little voyeuristic. Susie Day’s Bluebell Jones might be a good example of this, dealing as it does with a girl on … Continue reading
S is for St. Ives. “What I want,” Laura declared,”is to have a life packed with excitement like some of the characters in my books.” The series of adventures starring pre-teen detective Laura Marlin have been described as ‘Nancy Drew meets the Famous Five’. Certainly its got all the ingredients of a mid 20th century … Continue reading
So far I've been looking at wonderful vintage children's books about the seaside and more contemporary titles that look at fast fading childhood memories. So this week I thought I'd share some brilliant contemporary books featuring really bold heroines as they face coming of age – and the more dangerous coming of the tide… The … Continue reading
‘This is Pancake day,’ said the Professor, taking his four pairs of spectacles off, and getting them just as mixed up as he usually got his five pairs. ‘It is a festival that is inclined to die out, because although people like pancakes they won’t trouble to cook them. Too much trouble. Too much mess. … 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
What a wretched January that’s been. Mild, wet and endlessly boggy. It’s at this time of year that we really need something to cheer us up, but Christmas has already blown its load and all we’ve got to look forward to is a drab February that isn’t even offering up any pancakes this year. The … Continue reading
Two more things I love about the seaside: Weird attractions and twice hourly puppet shows starting at a quarter past and a quarter to the hour. Neil Gaiman delivers both of these in the Comical Tragedy, or Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch. The story takes place in, what Morrissey would describe as the seaside … Continue reading
I had originally planned to begin this series a little later in the year, but as it's such a bloody miserable January let's do it now. I'm talking seaside books. Books about long empty beaches, old towns stuck in time and mysterious things washing up on beaches. Or popping out of clam shells. Black sock … Continue reading
Here begins the year of Tove Jansson. 100 years since her birth, The Egg theatre in Bath bring us the UK’s very first staging of one of her Moomin stories (ridiculous!). The year also sees their first original motion picture outing in Moomins on the Riviera and a stage musical of Moominsummer Madness. But I’ll … Continue reading
You didn’t think I could get through an entire Advent without a bit of Raymond Briggs did you? This time last year we met the thoroughly working class Father Christmas as he grumbled his way round the ultimate night shift. A right Blooming Christmas it might have been, but there were signs that the rest … Continue reading
I've just been watching the strangely affecting BBC Four Christmas offering The Fir Tree, a Danish drama about the life of a Christmas tree; from birth through his brief, shining glory to a tragic death, it's quite unusually told by the fir itself. The story is based on a rather pessimistic tale by Hans Christian … Continue reading
Arnold Lobel, who would have been 80 this year, wrote his Frog and Toad books to help children learn to read. But like Dr Seuss, Lobel achieved much more through his characters, creating one of the most tender and believable representations of friendship in literature. In Frog and Toad All Year we follow the pair … Continue reading
We lost another great illustrator of children's books this year. Antonio Frasconi, who died in January was a master of the woodcut, inspired as much by comic books as he was by impressionism, Jazz and politics. In this sense he was a true American artist, but Frasconi was born in Uruguay, and according to wikipedia … Continue reading
It’s a peculiar thing, this love we have for ghost stories at Christmas. Begun by Dickens but perfected by Montague Rhodes James, the Cambridge scholar who combined his knowledge of history with the darkest recesses of superstitious belief, concocting the perfect stories to chill the heart on a chill December evening. The Tractate Middoth is … Continue reading
Sometimes you come across a book that makes you long to be a children's illustrator. Kazuno Kohara makes books that make you think that it might actually be possible. Her beautiful linocuts look deceptively simple, but I bet they're not. The effortless lines and simple vivid colour scheme captures the seasonal setting perfectly. Jack Frost … Continue reading
The Jolly Christmas Postman is that rarest of things: A sequel, and a Christmas spin-off of a bona fide classic that turns out to be better than the original. We follow the Jolly Postman (him again!) as he slip slides his way around Banbury Cross with an even more interesting load, packed full of cards, … Continue reading
We return to New York today and take a ride on the Magic Carousel of Central Park. This is not the richly colourful New York of Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day, but one that is shot through with splashes of grey and only occasionally enlivened by beaming baubles and enticing store fronts. Artist Ati … Continue reading
You know that bit in Raymond Briggs' Father Christmas when the old grump is dragging his sack across the roofs of a terrace of houses. Some of the windows below him are radiating amazing warm light, suggesting the sort of Christmas Eve excitement that Father Christmas will never be party to. Did you ever wonder … Continue reading
William Walace Denslow’s Saint Nicholas comes dressed in blue furs, a Rip Van Winkle hat and pipe gripped permanently between his teeth. ‘He looked just like a pedller opening his pack.’ I’d forgotten just how much of the Night Before Christmas was given over to describing the slightly alarming appearance of its protagonist, before reassuring … Continue reading
N is for New York. Sometimes a book can get weighed down by its cultural baggage, The Snowy Day more than most. In 1962 New Yorker Ezra Jack Keats produced one of the first children’s books with a black protagonist. At first it was hailed as a landmark in publishing, but as time went by … Continue reading
If you grew up in the 80s you'll remember how Scooby Doo was ruined for a generation of children by the addition of an irritating, wise cracking puppy called Scrappy Doo. Bringing new sidekicks into a long running series is usually a sign of desperation and artistic bankruptcy. So I did have to wonder about … Continue reading
After yesterday's gloomfest I feel obliged to bring a bit of happiness back to the advent calendar. And what could be happier than The Happy Christmas Book, an annual of the old fashioned kind, comprising of classic poems, carols and stories alongside comic strips, puzzles and things to make and do. The Happy Christmas Book … Continue reading
Some people find Raymond Briggs' The Snowman a little depressing. My daughter howls uncontrollably when the John Lewis ad with the Bear and the Hare comes on. Well those two ain't got nothing on The Little Match Girl, the bleakest of all Christmas stories. It's the last day of the old year and the Little … Continue reading
For some it's The Snowman, others It's a Wonderful Life, somebody somewhere chooses Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups. In our house though, Olive, the Other Reindeer is the TV Christmas treat. It all started when the children were small and getting up at ridiculous o'clock on Christmas Morning. Having weighed through TV specials of … Continue reading
Nobody does Christmas quite like Pippi Longstocking. Last year the pigtailed pirate’s daughter put on an after christmas party that culminated in the guests climbing the tree to recover their presents. In Pippi’s Christmas Guests, taken from the second volume of comics by Astrid Lindgren and Ingrid Vang Nyman, our hero faces spending December 25th … Continue reading
Roger Duvoisin, the Swiss born American writer and illustrator has great form when it comes to Christmas – with titles like White Snow, Bright Snow and the Santa revenge fantasy One Thousand Beards (‘Am I angry! . . . I’ll put an end to those false Santas! There is only one Santa Claus, and that’s … Continue reading
It’s a great shame that Roald Dahl never actually wrote any full length Christmas stories. The subject is the perfect territory for him. Christmas delivers all the trappings of a good morality tale, with its mixture of greedy children, stupid adults spoiling them and in Father Christmas, a central figure who is a mixture of … Continue reading
SO here we are again. Last year’s advent blog, which I had conceived imagining myself sitting by the Christmas tree, whisky in one hand, iPad in the other while the children sang carols in the background, turned into a bleary eyed marathon. Apparently there was other stuff that needed doing for Christmas. Who knew? This … Continue reading
Here's a special thing – a Christmas thriller by the author of Brighton Rock and The Third Man, drawn by the illustrator of Stig of the Dump and Little Tim, with a hero to rival Thomas or Ivor. The Little Steamroller was Graham Greene's final tale in a series about plucky little transporters. Following the … Continue reading
A latke is a potato pancake, traditionally eaten during Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights that ends tonight. Oil is central to Hanukkah, and this is where the Latke’s troubles begin. Nearly everything in this world is born screaming, and the Latke was no exception… fashioned from grated potato, chopped onion, beaten eggs and a … Continue reading
Coming a close second (after Sir Raymond Briggs) in my list of children’s authors who capture Christmas, is Dame Shirley Hughes (not actually a Dame or a Sir, but that’s surely a technicality). Last year I was taken back to my own 70s childhood when I re-read Lucy and Tom’s Christmas. This year, we go … Continue reading
The bugs are back for Christmas.Those party loving, intolerant insects first seen in Bugs in a Blanket are attempting to come together for a Christmas party. Trouble is they all want to do Christmas the way they do at home. That's the trouble with Christmas. You do it with your family – the right way … Continue reading
Here's a little treat for anyone missing Maurice Sendak this Christmas. Not an undiscovered book I'm afraid, but a story by one of his contemporaries, another New York author/ illustrator from Poland, Uri Shulevitz. Snow, first published in 1998 has that same distinctive mid-century style. His stylish caricatures are both crooked and curved. Beyond the … Continue reading
The Moomins aren’t a naturally Christmassy species. They prefer to spend their winters tucked behind an old boiler, or huddled together in their drawing room. You wouldn’t have thought the irascible Hemulens would have much truck with the celebration either, other than to give them something else to get cross about. But in The Fir … Continue reading
In 1968 three films were released that showed that Sci-Fi was versatile and capable of reaching a mass audience; 2001: A Space Odyssey proved SF could be truly mind-expanding; Barbarella made the genre sexy; Planet of the Apes proved that high concept craziness could make an awful lot of money. Also that year came a … Continue reading
When the Kate Greenaway medal for illustrated children’s books was announced the other week I was a little astounded; Jon Klassen’s instant classic I Want my Hat Back had been passed over. Surely there was nothing else out there to match the elegant wit of Klassen’s hat based comedy sequel? Turns out it’s been an … Continue reading
This week I thought I’d review a book written in French. I don’t speak French beyond blustering level, so armed with google translate I tentatively opened my copy of Jane, le Renard & Moi (Jane, the Fox and me – see, it’s all flooding back now). I needn’t have worried really. Although I didn’t actually … Continue reading
Now I love the old superheroes as much as the next nerd, with their utility belts, S&M gear and fascistic tendencies. But with Bats and many of his super friends now in their eighth decade isn’t it time for what Entertainment Weekly would call ‘A new generation of superhero’, or even better a ‘new science … Continue reading
The thing that really got me interested in this whole sci-fi thing in the first place wasn’t Star Wars or Doctor Who, it was a story about a witch called Meg who takes her scraggly cat Mog on a birthday outing to the moon. But she wasn’t the first witch in space, and she wouldn’t … 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
When I told my dad I was writing a children's Science Fiction book, ever supportive he said, 'Mhhh, well I hope it's not Science Fantasy.' I said, 'Well, it's about a girl who goes to school in a satellite, and has adventures with a cowardly band of space pirates. What do you think?' He's a … Continue reading
My daughter, who's seven, has been 'doing space' at school this term. It's something she's already a little obsessed by thanks to the Tintin story Explorers on the Moon. So we went out to look for some other space themed books for younger readers. It was a pretty depressing experience, particularly for her age group … 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
I’ve been properly obsessed with Pippi Longstocking since the first volume of comic book adaptations was released last year. First produced for the Swedish children’s magazine Humpty Dumpty by the original creative team Astrid Lindgren and Ingrid Vang Nyman in the late 50s, it’s the first time they’ve appeared in English. As I was counting … Continue reading
‘There’s so much to see and smell here! Whole levels of the library that nobody has been into for a hundred thousand years! Locked rooms full of ancient secrets. Treasure! Knowledge! Fun‘ Garth Nix’s Lirael. When Birmingham’s new mega library opened last week I was blown away by the sheer scale and heartened by a … 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
‘I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’ Alice to the Caterpillar. For a character so firmly fixed in the popular imagination as a blonde girl in a blue pinafore dress, with a white apron, Alice has … Continue reading
As I am currently obsessing over how to begin a story, I recently came back to one of my all time favourite opening chapters for inspiration. In How Nobody Came to the Graveyard, from The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman pulls off one of the most thrilling, disturbing opening sequences in children's literature. Gaiman sets out … Continue reading
While researching a piece on Matilda recently I came across the rather delicious fact that Roald Dahl had initially intended for her to be an absolute horror. His template for the character was another Matilda, the doomed anti-heroine from one of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children. This Matilda, so the subtitle explains, ‘Told lies and … Continue reading
In The Children of Noisy Village, or Alla Vi Barn I Bullerbyn to give it it’s Swedish name, Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lindgren returns to the landscape of her childhood for a series of vignettes about a perfect childhood in a rural Swedish village. This is how Astrid remembers her childhood, ‘That beautiful environment which … Continue reading
In ‘Miss Honey’s Cottage’ a small, clever girl walks to her teacher’s cottage in the woods. Once inside the hovel kind Miss Honey prepares her pupil tea and bread with margarine. Chapter 16 of Matilda doesn’t have the most thrilling synopsis you’ll ever read, but this is undoubtedly one of my favourite chapters in all … 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
I’ve been banging on about Roald Dahl without Quentin Blake for quite some time now. So I thought I’d better redress the balance and look at the work of the man who was in my opinion an equal partner in their creative relationship. Another equally important collaboration began several years before his work with Dahl. … Continue reading
Has there ever been a bad girl with a better pedigree than Eloise? Created by a Hollywood musical star and featuring a six your old free spirit who lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York with her beer swilling British nanny, a trainer wearing turtle and nary a parent in sight. Eloise's life at … Continue reading
