THE STORY OF ALISON HUBBLE by Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman. Reviewed by Penny Dolan

Once a teacher always a teacher, I admit, even when enjoying new picture book titles.  

 Some picture books immediately suggest use within an educational context, partly because the story can be interpreted through interesting topic work, often with a classroom “play-corner” alongside. These titles become popular within Early Years, Foundation and Year One classrooms because they fit in with aspects of the curriculum and are not any the worse for that.

(For example, an Early Years classroom I visited recently was working on THE BOG BABY, written by Jeanne Willis and illustrated by Gwen Millard. The internet offered instructions on how to make a Bog Baby collage, a gallery of blue-painted bog-babies created in classrooms and a downloadable record sheet where children can record their bog-baby observations. Well done, Puffin, for spotting that possibility!)

Occasionally, however, a particular book brings the reader the sense of a close family moment or a privately shared armchair story-time. This book is one of those. I imagined Alison Hubble being read by grandparents or parents, each reading-aloud taking place within the bonds of love and quiet fun. The plot feels as if it sprang from a family joke or teasing comment, and then developed into a delightful fantasy. The full title explains the whole dilemma:

This is the story of ALISON HUBBLE

 who went to bed single and woke up double.

The writer of this rhyming story is the much-beloved author Allan Ahlberg whilst the talented Bruce Ingman – possibly the only artist who has brought a poignant conflict between pencils and erasers so vividly to life – forms the illustrating hand in the team.

The plot echoes a familiar complaint, gently sighed from adult to child at the end of a long day: “Whatever would I do if there was another one of you?” and this is exactly what the Hubble parents discover, because Alison herself does what the title says. 

The Hubble's one little girl becomes two Alisons then four and eight and more, doubling on and on and causing much consternation at home, at school and beyond. 

 
The troubles are pursued with gentle humour: when eight Alisons become sixteen:

“Oh no,” said her mum

“What a tragedy!

It’ll take us four hours

To cook her tea.”

“You’re right,” said her dad.

“What rotten luck!

We’ll have to do the shopping

In a three ton-truck.”

As in all cumulative plots, everyone tries to help. The local council does send an enormous tent for the increasing family but the excitement of camping is spoiled when thirty-two little girls now find themselves squashed into just sixteen sleeping bags.

Ingman’s illustrations offer enjoyable tiny "subplots": the harassed teacher, registering the many Alison Hubbles, does not see a boy in the background answering as Alison and the newspaper photograph of a batch of identical Alisons contains one Alison gazing off to the side, like real-life child who won't do the helpful thing for the camera. 

You can have a peek at some of the spreads here. 

Eventually, the many Alison Hubbles need a whole town of their own - but I won’t say which or where - and the end-paper suggests that even further choices might be needed, raising a few more issues that might need discussion. 

However, for now, ALISON HUBBLE (please add the full title yourself!) makes an enjoyably eccentric picture book. Promoted as a tale of Mathematical Mayhem, the book is full of fun, wit and would be lovely to share.  

ALISON HUBBLE will be in bookshops from today, 4^th May, and I'm sure the well-established writer-and-illustrator team means that libraries will stock copies sometime soon. The picture book is recommended for children between 3 - 5years.

Penny Dolan

Ps. I’m just checking the publicity sheet here, as this was a picture book I received for review, and spot that the picture-book publisher is the ever-cunning Puffin! So I’m now wondering if I’ll find Alison Hubble "Times-table" games on screens when I next visit early-years classrooms? Or rows of identically Hubbley-paper-dolls on display? Perhaps you should take my review as an early “Alison Alert”?

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The Boyhood of Burglar Bill, by Allan Ahlberg, reviewed by John Dougherty.

Allan Ahlberg, in my view, is a national treasure. No: a National Treasure, the honorific capitals fully and unequivocally deserved; let me, as a declaration of interest, make that clear right from the start. Burglar Bill, Happy Families, Each Peach Pear Plum, The Jolly Postman, Peepo, Woof, Please Mrs Butler… the list of his work goes on and on, each book a unique jewel in the rich treasury of British children’s literature. He’s just fab.

The Boyhood of Burglar Bill is likewise fab, but in many ways almost entirely unlike any other Ahlberg book I know. It’s a memoir, for one thing, not about Burglar Bill at all but about Ahlberg’s own childhood, or one particular part of it. The part, to be precise, when he formed a football team.

Before half of you sigh disappointedly and move on, let me say that this is not a book about football, any more than Animal Farm is a book about agriculture or The Diary of Anne Frank a book about attic-rooms.

In 1953, when an under-twelves tournament, the Coronation Cup, is organised, Ahlberg and his friends - clever, loyal, sickly Spencer, and Ronnie, the “Frankenstein of Frogs” - are not chosen for the official school teams, and decide to enter their own. The story of how they do it - the recruitment process, the unexpected hurdles, their progress against the odds - forms the backdrop for a much bigger story which manages to be funny, engaging, exciting, enthralling, entertaining, and ultimately moving. It’s a story of true friendship and brief alliances, authority and rebellion, love and betrayal; and a marvellously real depiction of childhood, told in a voice that’s warm and wise.

Above all, it’s heartbreakingly honest. Or is it? For it may not be a memoir at all. It reads like one; it should be one; and yet the publishers describe it as a work of fiction - but a work of fiction “in which Allan Ahlberg explores his own childhood”. I suspect it’s truer than that, an unreliable memoir at most; if it’s a fake, then Ahlberg is even more of a genius than I already believe.

Whatever the truth, you’ll love this story. And when you reach the end, and suddenly discover what the story was really about, it will stay with you for days.

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