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
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
Lane Smith is one of the great American illustrators of recent times. His work proves the point of this series of articles: No matter how beloved and wonderful the Blake / Dahl partnership was, it’s a crying shame that Penguin don’t give contemporary artists the chance to give us their take, show us some new perspectives. 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
