Cloudland
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Cover Story
The cover of this issue is a design incorporating illustrations from four books illustrated by the subject of our Authorgraph, Ian Beck. The top left illustration is from Five Little Ducks (Orchard), the top right from Poppy and Pip's Picnic (to be published Autumn '97 by HarperCollins), the bottom left from The Owl and the Pussy-cat (Transworld) and the bottom right from Home Before Dark (to be published September '97 by Scholastic). Ian Beck's Picture Book (Hippo) is reviewed in this issue.
Beck talks to BfK's interviewer, Julia Eccleshare, also in this issue. His distinctive decorative style with its sensitive pen line and cross hatching has a nostalgic but sometimes also a surreal quality - he describes it as 'a look that is floating, strong and wistful all at the same time'.
Thanks to Orchard, HarperCollins, Transworld and Scholastic for their help in producing this composite cover.
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Cloudland
A child walking in the mountains with his parents gets lost and falls over a cliff. He is saved by a magic spell chanted by the magical cloud children, whose life in the sky he shares for a while before returning to his parents. That is all there is to the surface story but is there a vision here of a paradise glimpsed during a near death experience? Burningham offers a new departure in this large format picture book. The cheerfully painted people who inhabit his much loved earlier work (such as Mr Gumpy's Outing, Would You Rather?, Aldo) are here presented as foreground cut-outs against spectacular photographs of cloud formations. The large clear print is embedded in the collages or stands amongst delicate pencil drawings on facing pages. A visually striking and entertaining book.
