Stories featuring animals, whether the everyday domestic kind or the exotically unfamiliar, have always played a significant role in children’s literature. They are particularly popular with the writers and illustrators of picture books, reflecting the younger reader’s fascination with the numerous and colourful inhabitants of every corner of the natural world. Their appeal shows no signs of waning or their quality of deteriorating.
Anthony Browne’s beautifully produced Willy’s Stories (Walker Books, £12.99) reintroduces us to Willy the chimp – now, incidentally, 30 years after his first appearance. Still wearing his trademark Fair Isle pullover and corduroys, Willy is on this occasion depicted as walking through a succession of 12 doors, each leading to an adventure deriving from a children’s literary classic. How many of these, relying on both verbal and visual clues, can a reader identify?
Browne’s full-page colour pictures are stunning, not only capturing the spirit of the original texts but also adding their own idiosyncratic (and sometimes quite dark) perspective.
Rex, the preschool lion whom we meet in Yasmeen Ismail’s Specs for Rex (Bloomsbury, £6.99), will serve as an ideal role model for any child worried about being thought, in any respect, different. Here it happens to be a new pair of big, round and red spectacles that give rise to Rex’s apprehensions, humorously played out in home and school settings. Ismail’s daubs of brightly coloured paint, scattered generously through the text, mimic brilliantly the exuberance of kindergarten art.
Early childhood apprehensions lie also at the heart of Tatyana Feeney’s Little Frog’s Tadpole Trouble (Oxford University Press, £6.99). All would seem to be going swimmingly until Little Frog’s status as an only child is disrupted with the arrival of “nine baby tadpoles”. When they become his brothers and sisters, will egoism yield to more generous feelings? The storyline may be predictable, but its cleverness is in its telling, the clipped tone of the authorial voice enhanced by the minimalist use of line and colour.
The white, black and grey endpapers of Sophy Henn’s Where Bear? (Puffin, £11.99) give way to a sequence of individual pages in vibrant primary colours. These provide the backgrounds for the story of a poignantly observed relationship between boy and bear. As the latter grows, where can a suitable home for him be found?
The search for home is a familiar trope in children’s fiction but is rehearsed here (in both prose and picture) with engaging freshness and lightness of touch. The result is an interesting addition to “bear” literature, a book that is rather more complex than its apparent simplicity suggests.
Subtitled A Tale of a Boy and His Guinea Pig, Sheena Dempsey's Bruno and Titch (Walker Books, £11.99) provides further exploration of the developing bond between animal and human. Titch is a guinea pig who wishes for a "Big Person" to come along and take him away from Mrs Pinkerley's pet shop. The human is Bruno, a wildly inventive child whose attitude and behaviour seem, initially at least, to run counter to Titch's expectations. Their growing relationship, presented from Titch's perspective, is charted humorously and sympathetically in text and illustration.
Coming to us from the Netherlands, Sieb Posthuma’s Where Is Rusty? (Gecko Press, £10.99), translated by Bill Nagelkerke, is a delightfully whimsical combination of word and picture. Three dogs – Rusty, Henrietta and Toby – chaperoned by Rusty’s mother, are on a shopping expedition that takes them to a large department store. Chaos descends when Rusty becomes separated from the others and goes on a solo exploratory tour of the building. The hustle and bustle of a huge store is effectively and mischievously caught in the splendid full-colour detail of Posthuma’s illustrations. A joy!
There are three more dogs and a similar amount of canine chaos in Mara Bergman’s Best Friends (Hodder, £11.99), illustrated in attractive retro style by Nicola Slater. Set in a park where the dogs’ child owners do their best to control the mayhem, this rhyming story is characterised by a terrific sense of infectious fun that appeals equally to eye and ear. Slater merits special commendation for her depiction of the dogs: Daisy, the elongated dachshund, is a creative triumph on four short legs.
Although David Mackintosh's Lucky (HarperCollins, £12.99) does not quite qualify as an "animal story" it merits inclusion here as having as a minor character a dog – and, moreover, a dog called Abraham. Picture-book fans will know already of Mackintosh's innovative style and won't be disappointed by what they find in this witty and quirky glance at family life, portrayed through a variety of media, involving crayon, collage, pencil and typographical experiment. Childhood imaginations, Lucky reminds us, can entertainingly run riot. But it also asks how they stand up when confronted by more banal realities.
For those whose interest in the animal world extends beyond the fictional into the factual, it’s difficult to imagine a more appropriate final recommendation than Katie Scott and Jenny Brown’s Animalium (Big Picture Press, £20). Presented as a “virtual museum” of more than 160 exhibits, this is a sumptuously produced volume celebrating the two million species of living creatures with which we share our planet. Brown’s text is authoritative, informative and accessible and Scott’s illustrations breathtaking in their colour and detail.
