Children's Picture Books: The matching of literary and artistic talents, which is a prerequisite of all successful picture books, rarely reaches the heights attained, over almost two decades, by the husband and wife team of Allan and Janet Ahlberg: some of their 1970s and 1980s titles, such as Each Peach Pear Plum, Peepo! and The Jolly Postman are now recognised as classics of the genre.
In the 12 years since Janet's death, Allan has produced texts which have been well served by various illustrators, though none of the resulting books has quite made the impact of his latest offering, The Runaway Dinner, an immediately engaging blend of Ahlberg story and Ingman illustration.
Word and picture are here perfectly matched in their focus on the surreal, both drawing on the kind of inconsequentiality of narrative familiar in a nursery rhyme or Edward Lear limerick. A sausage (called Melvin) escapes from young Banjo's plate and leads the boy on a zany chase, soon accompanied by various vegetables, animals and assorted pieces of cutlery and furniture. The sheer absurdity of these details is beautifully juxtaposed with an authorial voice which is totally colloquial, as if what we are hearing about is the most normal event in the world. The same duality underpins Ingman's artwork, which manages to reinforce the apparent realism of the story while simultaneously highlighting its ridiculous dimensions.
Translated by Marilyn Nelson from Halfdan Rasmussen's original Danish poem, The Ladder comes with painterly pages of green, green grass and - until the end - cloudless blue skies. Dominating all these landscapes and skyscapes is a discarded ladder which takes it upon itself to explore its surroundings and experience something of the varied animal and human creatures which set out to climb it. The recurring motif of ascent heavenwards endows the narrative with what amounts to a parable-like theme, cleverly symbolised in those fold-out pages which allow the representation of the ladder to reach, apparently, into an infinite blueness. It is all, in more senses than one, a matter of perspective.
From New Zealand comes Ben Galbraith's The Three Fishing Brothers Gruff, described on its back cover as "a timely ecological tale". While such a description might suggest a moralising, didactic text, Galbraith's "tale" manages to play down such possibilities by the compelling strength of his setting and characterisation, aided by his employment of the structural and thematic devices of traditional storytelling. Visually, the book impresses, especially in its use of collage, design and typography, through the dramatic portrayal of fisherfolk, their communities and their precarious lives. Even the occasional peep-through page, often merely a gimmicky device in picture books, makes a significant (and humorous) contribution to the storyline.
There are further seafaring adventures in Tim, Ted & the Pirates, but the tone here is much more lighthearted. A little boy and his "Ted" are, through the imaginative power of a classroom story, transported into the watery world of treasure, sharks, pirates and faraway Loot Island, soon becoming involved in a sequence of richly onomatopoeic escapades where cutlasses clatter and clash. Wittily related in the form of a rhyming poem, Whybrow's fast-moving text finds its appropriate match in Ayto's splashily exaggerated full-colour illustrations. While children, most likely, will respond most enthusiastically to the piratical dimensions of these, the school setting which frames the nautical high jinks will raise a more adult smile of recognition.
The innocent fantasies of Tim and Ted give way, in Little Lucy's Family, to matters of more everyday reality. Subtitled "A Story About Adoption" and presented as a first-person account by Lucy, the young protagonist, this relates how, as a Russian adopted child, she is learning to accommodate herself to a new mother, father and - "Oh, I nearly forgot Nibbles - our crazy rabbit". While the narrative is warm-hearted and in places very touching, the real strength of the book is in its delightful and idiosyncratic illustrations, particularly where these ingeniously borrow from the motifs and details of Russian culture and design. It is good to see that a picture book of such topical interest and quality has been published and printed in Ireland.
Robert Dunbar is a commentator on children's books and reading
The Runaway Dinner Text by Allan Ahlberg, illustrations by Bruce Ingman Walker, £10.99
The Ladder Text by Halfdan Rasmussen, illustrations by Pierre Pratt Candlewick, £11.99
The Three Fishing Brothers Gruff By Ben Galbraith Hodder, £11.99
Tim, Ted & the Pirates Text by Ian Whybrow, illustrations by Russell Ayto HarperCollins, £5.99
Little Lucy's Family By Eleanor Gormally, illustrations by Orla Roche Veritas, €9.95