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. Joanna Carey is a former Children’sBooks Editor of The Guardian. 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. Jake Hope is a reading development and children’s book consultant. Ferelith Hordon is a former children’s librarian and Chair Elect of the Youth Libraries Group, and editor of Books for Keeps Margaret Mallett is a team editor for the 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 Rayner is an editor and has an MA in children’s literature. Andrea Reece is a marketing consultant and Managing Editor of 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 Sue Unstead is a writer and publishing consultant Ruth Williams is a children’s book editor and publishing consultant.
Books about Children’s Books
Michael Foreman: A Life In Pictures
Michael Foreman, Pavilion Children’s Books, 192pp, 978-1843652991, £25.00hbk
Michael Foreman’s book A Life In Pictures start. It’s a life that was almost over before it had properly started. It was 1941 and he was three when a bomb fell on the house where he lived with his brothers and his widowed mother, who ran the village shop. The bomb crashed into the bedroom (missing Foreman by inches), ricocheted around the room and His mum grabbed him and they all raced out of the house to the Anderson shelter.
the way his chin bumped up and down on his mum’s shoulder as she ran, ‘making the sky bounce’. Illustrations here from his book War Boy to an atmospheric watercolour that shows the family running for safety. We learn a lot about the wartime village community and the shop, both from Foreman’s memories, and his Even as a child, Foreman had a passion for drawing, Art materials were scarce, but luckily he was allowed to draw on the copious sheets of plain paper that lined the shop’s
He describes
to an old time traditional Art School. It was small and provincial. We were told to draw the world around us … over and over … we didn’t question it, we loved it. The habit of drawing the world around me stuck.’ And later on, after the Royal College of Art, a travel scholarship to the USA led to myriad commissions which took him (and his sketchbook) all round the world. He’s still passionate about the importance of drawing, and sad that it’s no longer a vital part of the art school training.
biscuit tins. And while delivering newspapers for his mum’s shop, he met one of the customers, an artist art class. This involved sketching out of doors - a real turning point for Foreman, whose approach to drawing changed radically when he began to draw from observation, rather than relying on his imagination. At 15 he went to the local art the drawing studio, along with the other, older students, ‘a lady came in and took off all her clothes. I stood behind an easel in the far corner and sharpened my pencil. It kept breaking.’
versatility and the magical luminosity of his watercolours, Foreman’s work (now around 245 books ) includes fairytales, classics, myths, his own original stories and picture books, and numerous collaborations with authors such as Terry Jones and Michael Morpurgo. Locations range ‘from the top of the world in the Himalayas to the bottom of the North Sea’,from the Playboy Club in Chicago, to the Chelsea Football Club in London and beyond. With such a wealth of pictures,covering so many aspects some surprises here - Foreman’s of his work offers a rare insight into the breadth of vision that has for so many most respected illustrators. JC
Ed’s Choice Where My Feet Go
Birgitta Sif, Andersen Press, 978-1-7834-4363-5, £6.99 pbk
When Little Panda wakes up in the morning, he is ready for adventure. Where will his feet take him as he travels through the day?
Birgitta Sif’s endearing quirky little panda is the archetypal toddler. His world is that of the child as he walks down the street, through the park, the sandpit and back home to bath and bed. This may be ordinary to adult eyes but to a child’s imagination it becomes a forest, an ocean, a desert waiting presents this child’s view as little panda addresses us directly. Not a word is out of place as panda’s through the day. Sif’s cool palette creates the perfect atmosphere, allowing the mind to move seamlessly between the real and
20 Books for Keeps No.217 March 2016
the imagined. Throughout, carrying the attention across each page, yellow moon boots remain the focus of each spread. Their importance is immediate as we meet them waiting neatly as we open the book. However, at the end they lie discarded – feet do not need boots to carry one through dreams.
Just as Emily Gravett’s Monkey and Me imaginative, so Birgitta Sif creates a narrative that can move beyond the page, inspiring young imaginations to see the world with different eyes and to play. Outstanding. .
FH
Under 5s Pre – School/Nursery/Infant The Snowman and the Sun
Susan Taghdis, illus Ali Mafakheri, Tiny Owl, 978-1-9103-2810-1, £7-99 pbk
in this picture book is unusual. There are only a few words on each page, often posing a ‘what if?’ Each spread is illustrated upon a squared grid, into and upon which perform the bizarre characters peopling this book. On the cover we meet the smiley snowman; with him is the boy, woolly hat in hand, whilst his smiley cat snuggles down… upon his head. High in the sunny sky buzzes the bee. When the story begins snowman, cat and bee are there, but snowman. The reader hardly needs snowman, forming water droplets, the pictures are quite strange and need studying to make meaning. The bee buzzes in the boy’s icecream cornet, the cat touches the cloud from the rooftop, bee buzzes by, this time riding a bicycle, and the cat grins at pulls the cat along in a cart, wearing
With his graphic skills, his ‘I was fortunate’, he writes, ‘to go
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