Young’s exuberant illustrations entice you to turn the pages

Young’s exuberant illustrations entice you to turn the pages. The Orchard Children’s Treasury, Orchard Books pounds 19.99. Mixing old and new, this treasury contains infant stories, picture stories, rhymes, poems, fairytales, legends and classic stories. They are divided into three sections: ‘The Nursery Years’ for the under-threes; ‘The Early Years’ for the under- sixes; and ‘Stories For All’, making it easy to dip into.
Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Neil Philip, illus Isabelle Brent, Little, Brown and Company, pounds 16. If you can’t laugh at the world you might as well be dead.”8 Babette Cole’s latest book, ‘Two of Everything’, is published by Random House, pounds 9.99.. A Year Full Of Stories by Georgie Adams, illus Selina Young, Orion pounds 20.

I don’t mind looking at them occasionally, but as for having one, I’m far too selfish.”She may now be found in the Educational section, and lumped together with Clare Rayner, as someone to consult when it’s time to tackle those difficult-to-talk-about subjects, but has the wild child turned into a middle-aged worthy? “No!”, she protests, “I’m not a worthy sort of person at all I’m just an entertainer I like making people laugh. In Kent, where she lived until recently, everyone knew her, and “I had to go and open fetes”, she says sulkily “People would turn up at my house with hoards of children. If you write children’s books people think you must love children, their children But I don’t. “I would rather shoot a rabbit and eat it than buy a book about one in a frock.”She now produces a book a year from her home in Lincolnshire or as she sees it “the land of the culturally dead” But nobody knows her, so she is happy. Graduating in 1974, she was determined to become a children’s author “There are only two things I can do in life.

Ride horses and tell a good tale.” She telephoned Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, the distinguished illustrators of Bagpus and the Clangers, told them she was brilliant and invited them to her degree show. “If you don’t think you’re the bloody best, no one else will. It comes from learning to show ponies when I was little.” They found she had illustrated a rather dull and serious art school project on woodworm liquid with enormous mushrooms and toadstools growing out of the windows and chimneys of a fairy-tale house She was hired as a freelance illustrator. Her first book, Promise Solves the Problem, based on her pony, was published in 1976. Her hero is Quentin Blake, “the king”; her bete noir: Beatrix Potter. John Birningham and Anthony Browne may be better artists, but Babette is funny, unrestrained and totally unforgettable.She is also extremely pushy.

Born and raised in Jersey in the Channel Islands, she studied illustration and film at Canterbury College of Art. It was he who chose Babette over other arguably more talented illustrators to do the series. And as most children’s books are published to a resounding silence, someone who can attract some attention has to be a good thing. Publisher Tom Maschler, the inspiration behind the issue books must think so. Anyone who wears hats decorated with plastic cherries, shepherdess-style dresses, or rides around in a pony and trap, as Babette is reputed to have done, has to not care that much about what people think. But men, I’m useless at.” Before, adding, “He’s a wonderful lover, though.”This tendency to blurt isn’t put on.

I’m an old lady you know”) and about her present “secret” love of 15 years “It’s a terrible relationship I’m very good at hats. And so does Babette.Before we’d even had coffee, she’d told me about how Princess Smartypants was her autobiography (“I was feeling terrible because for the first time ever I didn’t have a man in my life, then I created Princess Smartypants who enjoyed being a Ms and I felt much better”), how she’d fallen out with her agent over a publicity trip to Australia (“I’m not going unless I fly club class. Now, Two of Everything, a funny book about divorce, has already got Babette headlines in the Observer, a profile on BBC’s Bookworm and Channel Five’s Five’s Company, a slot on Radio Four’s Women’s Hour and into an argument with a “stupid abusive man” from Greater Manchester Radio “He hadn’t even read the book,” she shrieks “He started by saying, how could divorce be jolly. I said, ‘Excuse me, but have you had experience of it?’ He said, ‘I don’t think that’s relevant’. He was so bitter and awful, I put the phone down on him mid- interview. The others, though,” she adds quickly, “have been super.” And so they should, because it is a good book It’s funny, ground-breaking, brave and controversial It makes great copy. Gran and Grandad are actually pictured – well, their feet anyway – stone- cold, flat-out, feet-up dead.