Picture Books: Niamh Sharkeydiscovers colourful tales of beasties, bears - and pants.
Joel Stewart's line work, and use of colour in Dexter Bexley and the Big Blue Beastie(Doubleday, £10.99) are reminiscent of Edward Ardizzone. Young Dexter Bexley rides his scooter into the Big Blue Beastie, who's bored and wants to eat him up. Imaginative quick thinking on Dexter's behalf turns the Beastie's appetite on its head. They scoot off together, go into business delivering flowers, and set up a private detective agency, solving such bizarre cases as the solid gold snowball, and the great sausage heist. I adore the image of the Big Blue Beastie in his velvet smoking jacket puffing on a pipe, Sherlock Holmes style. Stewart has created eccentric characters full of delicious humour and whimsical wit.
In UFO Diary(Andersen Press, £5.99) Satoshi Kitamura paints a surreal portrait of a spaceship taking a wrong turn in the Milky Way. In panoramic strips we see the spaceship descend towards "a strange blue planet, bright as a glass ball". As we get closer and closer to earth we see a small boy. The two make a connection and the boy introduces the alien to his world (we never see the alien in the book). Satoshi Kitamura has a very cinematic vision as an author and illustrator. His pen, ink and watercolour illustrations are densely crosshatched and coloured. Kitamura uses strong indigo inks and wide-eyed characters to depict his vision of Earth, a sparkling planet in the cosmos.
Emily Gravett's Orange Pear Apple Bear(Macmillan Children's Books, £4.99), amongst other things, is a charming and creative introduction to the use of the comma. Gravett uses witty combinations of the same four words; each one is illustrated with a gentle sketchy line and watercolour wash. The sketchily drawn Bear is a charming character who grabs your attention and imagination. She encourages children to look closely at the image and derive their own meaning. It's the perfect book for little ones.
In Monkey and Me(Macmillan Children's Books, £9.99), Gravett weaves her magic again. It's a simple exploration of a girl's visit to the zoo with her toy monkey. She cleverly creates an impetus to turn each page, as young children delight in guessing what animal the cheeky little girl and her toy monkey are pretending to be. The use of repetition and playful rendering of animals in pencil and wash will delight the very young. My only reservation is that I feel the heavy black type could have been used more delicately and creatively on the animal spreads.
Vibrant, almost fluorescent illustrations by Nick Sharratt complement Giles Andreae's wacky text in Pants(Picture Corgi, £6.99). It is purely and simply a list of characters wearing underwear, "groovy pants, funky pants, cheeky little monkey pants". Toddlers will enjoy singing along with Lenny Henry on the accompanying music CD.
I knew Grill Pan Eddy, by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross (Andersen Press, £10.99), was a winner when I heard my three- and five-year-old children singing the catchphrase, "I'm Grill Pan Eddy, everybody ready?", at full blast at six in the morning. Willis and Ross have yet again created a memorable character in Eddy, a daring mouse full of personality. Willis has flair with language and creates jumbled-up versions of words that perfectly evoke the mischief: "He skied down the butter with his bovver boots. And sneezed in the snottage cheese." Ross captures the humour and comedy in his line work. Don't miss Grill Pan Eddy - catch him if you can!
William Joyce wrote and illustrated A Day With Wilbur Robinsonin 1990. This new edition (Harper Collins, £5.99) coincides with the opening of Disney's Meet the Robinsons. It goes to show that animations can be a long time in the making. Disney optioned the book 17 years ago, 10 months before its publication. Anything can happen when you call over to Wilbur Robinson's house. Wilbur has a robot, Cousin Laszlo has a new anti-gravity device, a frog is wearing grandfather's missing false teeth, and someone has left the time machine on. Joyce is the talented creator of Rolie Polie Olie, and the designer of the animated film, Robots. He is an exceptional artist and draughtsman who seems to master any medium he turns his hand to: watercolour, acrylic, pen and ink, computer graphics, to name a few. His illustrations stimulate the imagination and are a joy to behold. I hope with this new edition a new generation will enter Joyce's idiosyncratic world.
Niamh Sharkey is a writer and illustrator of picture books. Her latest book,I'm a Happy Hugglewug , is published by Walker Books.