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BfK


REVIEWERS IN THIS ISSUE


Brian Alderson is founder of the Children’s Books History Society and a former Children’s Books Editor for The Times. Gwynneth Bailey is a freelance education and children’s book consultant. Clive Barnes, formerly Principal Children’s Librarian, Southampton City is a freelance researcher and writer. Jill Bennett is the author of Learning to Read with Picture Books and heads up a nursery unit. Rebecca Butler writes and lectures on children’s literature. Katie Clapham runs specialist children’s bookshop Storytellers, Inc. in Lancaster. Stuart Dyer is an Assistant Head Teacher in a Bristol primary school. Anne Faundez is a freelance education and children’s book consultant. Janet Fisher is a children’s literature consultant. Geoff Fox is former Co-Editor (UK) of Children’s Literature in Education, but continues to work on the board and as an occasional teller of traditional tales. Ferelith Hordon is a former children’s librarian and editor of Books for Keeps Margaret Mallett is a team editor for the English Association’s journal English 4-11 and author of What Shall We Do Next?: A Creative Play and Story Guide Matthew Martin is a primary school teacher. Sue McGonigle is a Lecturer in Primary Education. Jana Novotny Hunter is an author and editor. Margaret Pemberton is a school library consultant and blogs at margaretpemberton.edublogs.org. Val Randall is Head of English and Literacy Co-ordinator at a Pupil Referral Unit. Andrea Reece is a marketing consultant and Managing Editor of Books for Keeps Annabelle Rose is Editorial Assistant Books for Keeps Gill Robins is a Junior School Deputy Head and Editorial Chair of the English Association publication English 4-11. Sue Roe has been working as a Children’s Librarian in various public libraries for a number of years. Elizabeth Schlenther is the compiler of www.healthybooks.org.uk Lynne Taylor works on The Reading Agency’s children’s programmes, the Summer Reading Challenge and Chatterbooks Nicholas Tucker is honorary senior lecturer in Cultural and Community Studies at Sussex University. Sue Unstead is a writer and publishing consultant Ruth Williams is a children’s book editor and publishing consultant.


Books About Children’s Books


Quentin Blake in the Theatre Of The Imagination: An Artist At Work


HHH


Ghislaine Kenyon, 256pp, illus. throughout, Bloomsbury, 978-1-4411-3007-5, £25 hbk


This monograph came as something of a surprise. I had expected from the title a set of acts in which we would observe the young performing artist gradually refining and expanding his capacities as illustrator from the schoolboy cartoons which were


Punch to the multiple creative and collaborative books that have made him BFG (not to say top class Clown) among his contemporaries. Such a predictable exercise is not for Ghislaine Kenyon however.


subtitle is ‘an artist at work’ and by thus devoting her


Her


to the business of mark-making on paper, on visualiser screens, or on walls


tries to identify for us the variety of Sir Quentin’s creative motives and imaginative processes. She does adopt a rough biographical chronology with regular divagations into topics that relate to the creative life. As a former teacher and then a gallery- educationist (who first worked with Quentin on the tremendous Tell Me a Picture show at the National Gallery)


or even building wraps she keen attention she approaches her report


very different angle from writers on picture books in general and her investigations into such matters as making exhibitions, the significance of flying and swimming in his work, the very substantial, but here little- known, French connection are often accompanied by quotes either from the man himself or from organisers and friends. He supplies a notable paragraph


(source unattributed) Bee-&-Me


Under 5s Pre – School/Nursery/Infant Copy Cat


HHHHH


Alison Jay, Old Barn Books, 32pp, 978-1-9106-4605-2, £10.99 hbk


I have to say at the outset that I’m a massive fan of wordless books; now here is another to add to my list of must haves. Pictures, when done by a first-rate illustrator such as Alison Jay, are an incredibly powerful story medium,


words and sometimes more thought provoking. ‘Why is a bee buzzing into an apartment of a city block?’ and ‘Was it attracted by the floral curtains at the window beside which one of the residents, a girl, sits reading her flower book?’ are two questions that come to mind immediately one starts reading. Buzzed by the bee, the girl’s first instinct is to seize a swatter and whack the bothersome bee, but at the sight of creature seemingly imploring her to desist, she grabs a tumbler and upends it over the bee instead; then off she goes to consult a suitable book, prepares a sugar solution, feeds the animal and releases it out of the window. ‘Farewell bee,’ she probably thinks to herself. A thunderstorm follows and back comes the bee looking decidedly damp. The girl takes him in and thus begins a friendship (There’s a brilliant spread showing


22 Books for Keeps No.219 July 2016 equally as eloquent as


the developing relationship and the bee’s growth which the girl measures carefully.) that’s full of adventures that take the two of them into the city, then soaring over the countryside and back again. Back, having collected and dispersed some of the bounties of the meadows that eventually bring beauty and happiness to the city’s human residents, and a habitat for insects. In


friendship, a human addition to the


develops too - between neighbours – the girl and a boy living above her in the same apartment block. And if that’s not enough, there are numerous incidental


imagined from the glimpses of other people’s lives that we see through the windows of the flats and below in the streets. There are words however, after this


gently humorous tale has finished: the final page is one of ‘BEE AWARE!’ information


‘bee-ing’ friendly that concludes with a warning: ‘Don’t try to pick up the bees, though – they just might sting you!’ What a wonderful celebration of nature.


JB and helpful hints on stories to be friendship girl/bee HHHH


Ali Pye, Nosy Crow, 32pp, 978-0-8576-3682-9, £6.99 pbk


The play on words in the title of this picture book is a delight. The three kittens inside are cats, and as they are all ‘copy cats’ the reference is just right. Wherever Anna goes, Bella follows. She thinks Anna is the bee’s knees, and wants to do everything Anna does, but she often isn’t very good at being a ballerina or a pirate, and when they play princesses and there is only one crown, Anna is cross and goes away all ‘huffy puffy’. ‘Stop copying me,’ she shouts!


lonely, but finds a skipping rope and with lots of practice, becomes good at skipping. Enter Chloe, the third kitten, who finds Bella’s talent fascinating and wants to copy her. Bella is more than willing to share, and soon both kittens are skipping happily. Then, of course, Anna returns….. The story is a good one about sharing, about being a good friend, and about letting your


Bella is


illustrations are fun, full of colour – even the kittens are colours no kitten ever was – and the front cover has lots of shiny bits that children will love. There is also a smart-phone QR code that you can scan to get the story read aloud. Good fun! ES


friends be themselves. The from a accepted by


on a quote from Hilary Mantel on ‘imagining strenuously’ and in the final chapters of the book there is a revelatory account of his ‘therapeutic’ genius in working with the physically or socially disadvantaged. It precedes a coda where, in his eighties, he looks forward to


in his future projects. (It is slightly unnerving to find this final chapter initiated with a plate from the Folio Society’s Golden Ass which reminds one as much as anything of Bewick’s Waiting for Death.) Full though it is with new and


often perceptive insights into the theatre


Kenyon’s book is not an easy one to read.


which often cannot be found in the notes,


placed between the end of the text and


are used for an, again defective, list of illustrations. You have to read the book with two fingers placed between its latter pages or else read through confronted by pictures which may not readily explain themselves.


BA


Brian Alderson comments further on Sir Quentin’s work on our back page.


the Acknowledgments and these of Quentin’s imagination,


in one’s sense of direction and this is exacerbated by Bloomsbury’s clumsy editing. There is no clear policy for annotating the


The divagations cause a loss


many quotations are


‘something happening’


tiresomely which


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