Tag Archives: Michael Foreman

Bookshelf Travelling in Insane Times

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It’s Bookshelf Travelling in Insane Times again which is hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. I must say that I’m really enjoying this meme, getting a keek at other readers’ bookshelves and at the same time it’s pushing me to read books that I had forgotten I had, mind you the lack of visits to libraries during this Covid lockdown is helping too. Last week I read Merlin Dreams which featured in my ‘Insane’ post.

Songs with Music from a Child's Garden of Verses cover
The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories cover

So this week I’m sticking to the same bookshelf – Songs with Music from a Child’s Garden of Verses by R.L. Stevenson is illustrated by Margaret W. Tarrant. It’s an old book dating from either 1918 or the 1930s depending on who you believe. I think I bought my copy at a specialist book fair, possibly the Christian Aid one in Edinburgh which of course didn’t take place this year. Anyway the illustrations are charming and you can see some of them here.

The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple is illustrated by Rebecca Guay and is obviously aimed at older children – girls I suppose. It features Coppelia, Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Nutcracker, Shim Chung: The Blind Man’s Daughter, The Sleeping Beauty and Daphnis and Chloe. You can see some of the illustrations here.

Mother Goose cover

I love Michael Foreman’s illustrations and his Mother Goose book has a foreword by Iona Opie, the collector of children’s rhymes and folklore. Opie says: ‘The nursery rhyme repertoire stays remarkably constant. What need for new nursery rhymes when there are always new children?’ But this book contains quite a lot of rhymes that I had never heard of. This is quite a thick book with 152 pages jam packed with rhymes and hundreds of illustrations and it even has an index of first lines. You can see some of Foreman’s illustrations here.

Fairy Tales from Hans Andersen Cover

Lastly, Fairy Tales from Hans Andersen is a classic illustrated edition and the illustrations are by multiple artists, including Mabel Lucie Attwell, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson and many more. The back cover features the image below.

Attwell

Not Bad for a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo

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I swithered with the idea of NOT signing up for the Goodreads Challenge this year, the last two years I signed up to read 100 books and in 2014 I just managed it, but it did mean that I was concentrating on quick reads towards the end of the year, just to get that 100 under my belt. Anyway, I decided to sign up for 75 this year as I do like being able to see at a glance what I’ve read on Goodreads and this should mean that I’ll have more time for classics which tend to be fairly hefty.

So to Not Bad for a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo, this book was published in 2010 and is obviously aimed at children but I bought it for the Michael Foreman illustrations, I don’t think I had ever read anything by Morpurgo before.

This is a very quick read, the story is told by a young boy who was born in 1943, one of six children with no father figure around. His mother isn’t able to cope with his bad behaviour which gets worse and worse as he gets older. The upshot is that as a teenager he ends up being sent to a borstal for a year, borstals are now called young offenders institutions.

There are horses at the borstal and he eventually gets a job looking after them and that’s the beginning of a big change in his life. He is trusted to befriend a nervous horse, a Suffolk Punch (like small versions of Clydesdales) called Dombey and the relationship which he builds up with him and the respect which he gets from Mr Alfie, the head of the stables, lead to good behaviour and getting released early from the borstal.

It’s a tale which shows that young people who have lost their way in life can get back on track again if just a few adults like teachers are willing to give them another chance.

There are a few pages and photographs at the end of the story which tell about the history of borstals and horses in the military and also the Suffolk Punch horses which came so close to dying out completely, in fact at the time of publication there were only 410 of them and they are on the critical list of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. Morpurgo is obviously very fond of animals and horses in particular and he and his wife have set up a charity called Farms for City Children. You can also take a look at the Suffolk Punch Trust if you’re interested. You can see images of Suffolk Punch horses here.

You can see some Michael Foreman illustrations here some of them are from the book.

Christmas Books

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Christmas Books

Above is a photo of the books which I bought over the weeks before Christmas – and said to Jack, just wrap those up for me! After so many years it isn’t crucial to get a sumptuous present and I’m in the happy position of not really needing or wanting anything expensive.

You’ll have noticed that my cache of books leans heavily towards children’s publications, that was just luck or serendipity, not something which I set out to do.

1. Crime Out Of Mind by Delano Ames. He was a 2014 discovery for me and I’ve read a few of his books, I’ve enjoyed them all and this is another Dagobert and Jane book, his married sleuths, so I have high hopes of it. It was published in 1956.

2. Sir Gibbie by George MacDonald. First published in 1879 this is a children’s book by a Scottish writer who used to be very popular but is now hardly read.

3. Love by Elizabeth von Arnim, published in 1925. I already have a copy of this but I had to buy this one when I saw it in its green binding, I have most of her other books in this guise and my other copy of Love is a modern paperback.

4. Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office by Hugh Lofting, first published in 1924. This is another children’s author which I missed completely as a youngster. There are a lot of books in the series and the Doctor Dolittle film was based on them.

5. Whizz for Atomms by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, published in 1956. I bought this because of the Ronald Searle cartoons, it’s a similar idea to the St Trinian’s books, it looks like a good laugh.

6. In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor, published in 1961. I have read a fair few of her books and enjoyed them.

7. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming, this is an omnibus of the three stories which Fleming wrote in 1964 – 1965, but this book was published in 1971. I’ve already blogged about this one.

8. Not a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo and illustrated by Michael Foreman, published in 2010. I’ve not read anything by Morpurgo yet (I think) and it’s about time I did but to be honest I would have bought this book just for the illustrations because I’m a Foreman fan.

9. Last but definitely not least is Edmund Dulac’s Picture Book for the French Red Cross, published in 1915. As it says on the front cover, all profits on sale given to the Croix Rouge Francaise, Comite de Londres. Obviously to help with the First World War casualties. I was lucky to get this one at St Andrews for a reasonable price, there are people online asking silly money for it. Some of the stories are old faithfulls like Cinderella but there are a lot which I hadn’t heard of before. The illustrations are lovely and if you are interested you can download it free from Project Gutenberg here.