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
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