Little Bird
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover is from the gift edition of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory illustrated by Quentin Blake and with design and typography by Peter Campbell. The successful collaboration between Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake has played an important part in the popularity of Dahl’s work over the last fifteen years. Blake’s unmistakable artwork truly complements Dahl’s writing. His economical, amiable, illustrative style balances out Dahl’s often expansive language. And the liveliness, humour and pathos of the drawings offer a softer side to Dahl’s sometimes gloriously grotesque, sometimes cruel descriptions of his characters.
Thanks to Penguin Children’s Books for their help in producing this July cover which commemorates the thirty years anniversary of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s first UK publication.
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Little Bird
Little Bird looks out from the nest and sees various other animals doing things she cannot do. At last she realises there is one thing she can do that they cannot - she can fly. The book is illustrated in Campbell's characteristic style - black line and felt pen drawings set in a lot of white space - but without any of his surprise flaps or tabs to pull until the very last page where Little Bird rather minimally flies out of the book. The story certainly spoke to my three-year-old, who is finding it hard to be little at the moment but I felt this was a poor example of a theme fairly commonly explored in picture books, and without the originality of some of Campbell's earlier work.
