Wild Things

Patrick Skene Catling

writes about some recent illustrators of children's books.

I've just spent a terrible, long nigh!, sleeping, or trying to sleep, with a" Oliphaunt, a Hipporhinostricow, Malfeasance, a Bogus-Boo, a 11°1111 Goloch, a Snitterjipe and even a Slithergadee. They are a few of 011ie creatures drawn by Rowena Allen wit malevolent inventiveness for a book that Faber have published for children in „11) for Christmas, Amazing Monsters: VerT„ to Thrill and Chill. A slimy, arrierit IL carnivorous-looking gang they are, ereejbt hybrids with scales, fur and feathers, n't might have been begotten by lizards anvi snakes and armadillos, though Roller Fisher, who edited the book, must bear some responsibility for their genesis. y It is clear from the verses, by niani. writers; many of them famous, such as R. R. Tolkien and Spike Milligan, that in", monsters are meant to be funny. But I On.; really see how any monster can be very ny when it's squirming around in your bral4 in the hostile darkness at four o'clock in rn., tahreroluegssh cowardlythehidetohuasn Ianatmho;

morning. I acknowledge that most chilelre.

with tolerant, weary smile this morning, a wondered whether this is the sort of stui: that children laugh at. If it is, will theY On res tinue to laugh at memories of these Pier" during the nervous night-hours of irlareti..r ty? W. H. Auden never overcame his of the Red-Legged Scissor-Man and al/t " things that threateningly move up close

to

you when your back is turned. en- Even in the cradle, however, children as joy the slight fright of.peek-a-boo garnes'..1 long as it is obvious that there is act" threat to personal security. Infants like Lnd excitement of being tossed into the air ".m4. caught after a short, not-too-alarming ITtii Older children find pleasure in the fear' 41,11xietY created by story-tellers such as the ufrothers Grimm. I suppose one of the most ,?,11cIlY remembered moments in 'Snow bw•Inte' is when the witch urges the girl to bite e1 poisonous apple. I'm almost con- ng myself; perhaps there's nothing

8 with imaginary monsters on nursery

Quentin Blake's 'usual fine drawings' book 440-shelves. But I still think there are nable arguments on both sides of the ntroversy between teachers, librarians wise Parents who wondered whether it was Ssuedt° show very young children Maurice Th-pt's wonderful picture-story, Where th;,,'ild Things Are (Bodley Head). Now even monsters were certainly comic and th endearingly cuddly and I don't think u,.!,y could Possibly do any harm; but I'm

quite sure.

41.11.11 this solemn mood of Prodnose en- Inb12, I went to see 'Painted Tales,' an ex- reep7,11 of paintings and drawings from 1, -411' Published children's books, in the .rlittelten

Circle foyer of the National

teeehat,re. It's an excellent show of work of a visi'nnteallY high standard and well worth last-T.41g, if You are at all interested in the il- tinnlIon of children's books. The exhibi- ts- free and will remain there until

J en,S,°Ianuary.ne of the pictures are of a carefully an"d`rived beauty, transcending naturalism rai;.' attaining something very much like Children will appreciate Hamish r0-",, ikon's new edition of Cinderella, with

hr IC illustrations by Moira Kemp. It is "rfirst book. Church Mice in Action, written and

is ,

n,, ki oy Graham Oakley (Macmillan), chib.Te of the few visually funny new ailo'Lren's books I've seen this year, in sta21 the humour is an integral part of the bin;3 ' unforced, unstrained. Oakley corn- cats-c!°selY observed, realistic paintings of tnie, h wonderfully anthropomorphised Brin"'t;,' which make human gestures and ees, as they win their fight against great odds. In a statement of his artistic principles,- Oakley has said: 'I'm very op- posed to pictures in children's books that look like paintings in a gallery.' The story's the thing.

Errol Le Cain apparently believes other- wise. His illustrations for Andrew Lang's version of Aladdin (Faber) are as lavishly decorative, formal and static as Persian miniatures. They convey a sense of exotic antiquity, which suits the subject, of course; but they are curiously unmoving. They seem to have been designed for ad- miration at a distance. Many children's books seem intended to please the adults who buy them - the editors and the customers in the shops.

Nicola Bayley's paintings, of more cats, are exquisitely detailed studies in a more realistic tradition. Her pictures for The Patchwork Cat are extraordinarily faithful renditions of the textures of commonplace objects. Even her dustbins are beautiful. At the National there are some exciting little shocks for the shockable, most notably Michael Foreman's pictures for The Fairies. I liked his portrayal of a girl with 'uncivil lips' who looked understand- ably distressed when bad words caused her to utter bile-green snakes and toads. Foreman's Puss in Boots illustrations also • pack quite a mean wallop. There's one, for instance, of an ogre turning himself into a snarling lion. The shadowy phases of his facial metamorphosis are all depicted in one ingenious painting. There is something strangely fascinating about anatomical distortion and dream-like changes of scale. As Lewis Carroll knew, children enter easily into dream-worlds, if their creators genuinely believe in them and their illustrators are consistently convinc- ing. It is possible still for children to iden- tify with Alice, in spite of her Victorian ap- pearance, even when she is magically altered to mouse-size or to bigness that reduces an ordinary house to a house suitable for dolls. There is absolutely no condescension, no suggestion that the writer and artist are playing at being children. Children are always quick to notice with a proper contempt when 'grown-ups' clump along on the leaden feet of whimsy. That way they can never catch the butterflies of authentic childish fantasy. Roald Dahl comes uncharacteristically close to the sort of error I mean when he in- vents a special cute language for the hero of The BFG, a big, friendly giant (Cape). 'Every human bean is diddly and different,' Dahl has the giant saying. 'Some is scrum- diddlyumptious and some is uckyslush.' That's the sort of stuff that made Dorothy Parker confess that Tonstant Weader fwew up. I mention Dahl's unfortunate falling short because it demonstrates how impor- tant illustrators can be. Quentin Blake redeems the uckyslushiness with his usual fine drawings, which are deceptively casual in line but really solidly well-made and ab- solutely unsentimental. Obviously one cannot help retaining favourite books from one's own childhood. I was reminded of innocent perfection when I referred to The Work of E. H. Shepard (Methuen), in which some of his best il- lustrations are reproduced, many in colour. Though Christopher Robin could make me feel faintly queasy on the wrong day, Shepard, like Quentin Blake, with his fine draughtsmanship repeatedly compensated for A. A. Milne's tendency to sprinkle a bit too much sugar on his characters. And Shepard's illustrations for Kenneth Grahame's Wind in The Willows are classically authoritative, if not definitive to , the exclusion of all who would offer their own interpretations.

John Burningham, an artist of rare sen- sitivity, has bravely re-illustrated the sacred text. Some of his illustrations are lovely evocations of Edwardian bucolic bliss. Some of the minor drawings, especially of Toad, are delightful. But can that be Badger, or merely someone pretending to be Badger? And I must say that the climac- tic scene of the whole story, the heroic liberation of Toad Hall, is shown much, much too small. Handsomely boxed, the book is published by Kestrel, who seem to be marketing it in a big way, undoubtedly confident that new readers will come to it with open minds, which Burningham deserves, though he cannot reasonably ex- pect to find them in middle-aged afi- cionados of the original work who turn its pages reverently every year in one of the long-established rites of Christmas.

Wishing to conclude in a positive, forward-looking way, may I recommend Edward Gorey's deliciously Gothic pop-up book, The Dwindling Party (Heinemann)? It has a typically ghoulish Gorey plot, in- volving calamitous disappearances into the dark cross-hatching. This book is a par- ticularly ingenious and entertaining exam- ple of this recently repopularised and elaborated form, for which British publishers have recruited 'paper engineers' and manufacturers from Colombia and Singapore.