JUDITH KERR'S CREATURES - reviewed by Emma Barnes

“Once there was a little girl called Sophie, and she was having tea with her mummy in the kitchen...”

So begins Judith’s Kerr’s classic picture book The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Without ever setting out to learn it, I know the whole text off by heart. I doubt that I’m alone. When I went to see Judith Kerr at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, not only was the huge marquee packed to capacity with fans of all ages, but the Chair, Lindsay Fraser, revealed that when she worked in a bookshop, Kerr’s Tiger was the most stolen book. The reason – small children coming into the bookshop would immediately recognise it, and feel that this familiar and much loved story must belong to them.

Judith Kerr is ninety this year. She is the author of many fantastic and classic children’s books – from Mog the Forgetful Cat and its successors, to lightly fictionalised accounts for older children of her childhood as a refugee from Nazi Germany (When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and its sequels).

The Festival session marked the publication of Judith Kerr’s Creatures, a memoir of her life produced in glorious hardbook, packed with illustrations and other artwork. Kerr herself was immensely charming and gently funny, as she read a passage which celebrated her late husband, the television writer Nigel Kneale. It’s a cliché that behind every great man lies a great woman: and it was lovely (and moving) to hear this tribute to a husband who always supported his wife’s gifts, from encouraging her to take her first writing job, at the BBC, to providing vital help with the plot of Mog the Forgetful Cat. “Have her catch a burglar,” he suggested, when Judith said she needed an exciting finale for her book – and the rest is history.

There’s lots of fascinating material in the book, from the tale of how her father, theatre critic Alfred Kerr, was on Hitler’s blacklist, and fled Germany after a tip-off in 1933, to be followed by his family, to Judith Kerr’s experiences in war-time London, to her pioneering approach to her first picture books. (Inspired by Dr Seuss, she aimed to use only a limited vocabulary, and to never to have anything in the text that was already clear from the pictures.)

All of this is accompanied by marvellous images, from family photos, to childhood paintings, to the work she produced as an art student – even her designs for wallpaper.

For anyone interested in writing or illustrating children’s books this book is particularly special – and useful. For it includes the manuscript stories, roughs, and complete spreads for many of Judith’s books. It’s wonderful to see Mog, somehow completely herself, even in an early manuscript squiggle. But it is also a rare chance to actually understand how a picture book is constructed - how this creation of words and images really works.

It’s a wonderful book, one to dip into, treasure and keep close by you on the shelf.

Published by HarperCollinsChildren'sBooks ( 2013)

Review by Emma Barnes
www.emmabarnes.info

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WHAT’S UP WITH JODY BARTON – by Hayley Long

Reviewed by Jackie Marchant

This is a story about living above a café with your twin sister, a soppy dad and glamorous mother, having to help in the café whether you like it or not, until the day Liam Mackie walks in and you fall instantly and hopelessly in love.  And so does your twin sister.

It’s about watching your twin sister flirt outrageously in a ridiculously short skirt with the boy you’ve fallen for, about having to answer her endless questions about whether or not you think he’s fit, until you make the ultimate sacrifice and hand her the mobile phone he left in the café, so she can be the one who gives it back to him. 

But why does Jody make this sacrifice, when Jolene has ditched dozens of boyfriends, after declaring each one of them ‘the one’?   How can Jody bear to watch them together in the café?

Because Jody has a secret. 

And when the secret comes out, this book changes from a lively, fun read into something a lot more serious – but no less fun and lively.  Having let Liam into the secret, Jody now has a terrible time agonising over whether or how to explain why it has led to a horrible row between Liam and Jolene that has left Jolene inconsolable.  But Liam is not going to keep quiet about the secret and, once Jolene finds out, the happy balance within the while family is threatened.

It’s difficult to say more without revealing the secret, which came as a complete surprise to me.  But the aftermath is beautifully handled in the same light, highly readable way.   Jody is such an engaging character that we are desperate to keep turning the pages to make sure everything works out in the end. 

This is a highly engaging, enjoyable read.

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Writing Children's Fiction, by Yvonne Coppard and Linda Newbery, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

Unusually for a ‘how to’ book, this book makes a very enjoyable, as well as interesting read, whether or not you are looking for specific information.  Written, back and forth in short chunks, between the two authors and referencing numerous others, its style is lively and fun at the same time as being highly informative, clear, and full of wisdom.  Those bite-sized chunks make this very much a ‘just one more’ sort of a read, and you find yourself gobbling it up far faster than you intended! 

The two authors tell their own personal tales of reading and writing and being published.  But this is no self-indulgent wallow.  It is a highly practical book, well indexed and referenced in ways which enable you to go straight to any particular point you may be after.  And it is really up-to-date with the politics and developments in the current children’s book market. 

The book falls into three sections.  The first section is discussing children’s books.  It tells you why and how children’s books are important, but also how they can offer a wonderful opportunity to writers who want to explore story in ways that writing for adults simply doesn’t allow.  It tells how it is very hard to write for children, but also how fun and how powerful it can be.  That’s exciting. 

The second section gives short accounts by a range of important children’s authors who talk about their own, very different, experiences of writing.  A wonderful, amusing, account of the very strong family stuff that set Jennifer Donnelly writing historical fiction.  Read how Frank Cottrell-Boyce likes to write with no ending in mind but the promise that a ‘flash of lightning’ will arrive at the end of a narrative to show how to make sense of it all.  Mal Peet tells us to ‘be wary of research.  It’s like a helpful passenger with the dangerous habit of trying to grab the wheel’.  And Andy Stanton writes funny-seriously about the importance of writing funny books.  And much more.

In the third section we get practical advice about each stage of writing and submitting.   

This book even tells which sort of children’s book is most sought after by publishers at the moment.  But if you want to know what that is, you’ll have to read the book!

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