The Owl-Tree
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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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The Owl-Tree
Anthony Lewis
Readers familiar with Nimmo's The Stone Mouse will need no persuading that she is an author to recommend to junior-aged children. Staying with Granny, Joe quickly comes to believe that if the wonderful tree in next door's garden is chopped down, Granny's life will be too (echoes of Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders). Joe despairs of persuading the Monster as Granny's next-door neighour is known not to axe the tree - until, that is, he discovers it secret: a barn owl with great wings that the Monster himself once ringed. From that point on, it is a race against the clock until the owl-tree is reprieved and, in storybook style, neighbourly differences buried. Nimmo's accessible narrative has a fine eye for how children see the strange and blustering adult world; she captures, the heady mix of fear, joy and expectation that Joe experiences. Lewis's line-drawings are superbly focused on the novel's turning points.
