If it’s all right with you, I’d like to launch a campaign please. Right here. You may be wanting me to cut to the chase and just recommend some children’s books, but bear with me. I’m on the case.
My campaign is to have pictures in books again. Adult books too, but obviously books for children. There are some wonderful illustrators out there, contemporary ones, for all ages, and the scandalous thing is, they are usually limited to the age range, 0–7. If you want to remind yourself what we’re missing, make for the House of Illustration in London’s King’s Cross; that should do it. Or try Chris Beetles’s annual, brilliant exhibition, The Illustrators, on now at his St James’s gallery.
There are so many books where it’s the combination of author and illustrator that makes you love them. In the case of The Flying Classroom and The Parent Trap (£7.99 each, Spectator Bookshop, £7.59 each) by Erich Kästner, now republished by the ever brilliant Pushkin, it’s the combo of author, illustrator and translator. The bold line drawings by Walter Trier are the work of genius — he was quite something, was Trier. As for the stories, if you’re a fan of Emil and the Detectives, then you’ll find these just as spirited, with the same element of children pitted against the world. The translation, by Anthea Bell, who did Asterix, is very fine.
Younger children have it made when it comes to pictures, but I wouldn’t let them keep picture books for themselves. Some are just too good. Take This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen (Walker, £6.99, Spectator Bookshop, £6.64), an account of a little fish nicking a hat from a big fish, more or less the theme of his equally fabulous I Want My Hat Back. Something simple for infants? Actually, it’s one of the funniest books of the year.
From The Last Days of Stefan Zweig by Laurent Seksik and Guillaume Sorel (Salammbo, £13.99)
From The Little Train by Graham Greene, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, published by Jonathan Cape