kirkusreviews.com
To celebrate 20 years of the U.K.’s
Children’s Laureate program, the first 10 to be appointed to the position offer
remarks on their craft.
The roster of contributors is heavy
with honored names, bookended by Quentin Blake, the first laureate (1999-2001),
who writes about stylistic relations between pictures and story, and Lauren
Child (2017-2019), describing how her stories develop in a dynamic mix of
writing and drawing. In between, Michael Rosen grows a poem from one funny-sounding
word, “Bobble”; Michael Morpurgo ruminates on finding just the right voice; Jacqueline
Wilson presents a short story in diary form; and Chris Riddell visually lays
out a five-point strategy for making drawing a constant daily activity. Malorie
Blackman, the only person of color in the lineup, follows a set of
brainstorming questions with a fable written from three points of view. Some
contributions, such as Morpurgo’s tale of a heroic librarian, “I Believe in
Unicorns,” Anne Fine’s selection of original bookplates by various eminent
illustrators, and Anthony Browne’s Shape Game, have appeared elsewhere in print
or online, but the personal statements are new and the contents assembled in an
appealingly informal way that invites younger audiences to the party as well as
readers who have grown up with these authors and illustrators. Riddell’s
caricatures at the end are alone worth the price of admission.
A genial salute to and from the
original corps of children’s-literature ambassadors. (Anthology. 10-13)
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