Author: Helen Nicoll
Illustrator: Jan Pienkowski
Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd 1975, Puffin Books 1979, edition featured 2009
I think this is a 'Marmite' series, you either love these bizarre, nonsensical, bold, bright books of the 1970s Nicoll and Pienkowski Partnership, or they furrow your brow in a bad way. I love watching adults who aren't familiar with the series, try to read these to children for the first time. The series borders on the psychedelic, with dystopic plots and a strange sort of coherence. They leave you filling puzzled and yet fulfilled.
Cartoon witch Meg lives (in a house) with Mog the black cat and Owl, the white bird.
Together they go on an adventure or celebrate an event, usually involving making spells that go slightly wrong, always ending peacefully with the characters waving their goodbyes. The books are made up of exuberant colourful illustrations, pop-art style, and incredibly short stanza, one- six words per page normally. There's a a lot of onomatopoeia used, mixtures of font sizes and styles, and grabbing impact words such as ' victory!' ( huge font). In Meg's castle there are interesting cultural references to the Green knight legend and St George, with snippets of rhyme and proverb thrown in for good measure, 'I'm the king of the castle.' Meg, Mog and Owl books are action-filled as well as eye catching, and are great fun to read aloud. Here's my favourite high-drama page of this title:
The Meg, Mog and Owl series are perfect share-with stories for the 18month- 3 year old old range because these books are loud, fun and the snippets of speech, rhyme, spell are very catchy and memorable, 'call me George'! This series also comes into its own again for 3-5 year olds, with such simple sentences, making them suitable 'first readers.' I'm also finding the series quite useful to inpart the principles of comic- book writing on my 7 year old, encouraging him to add speech bubbles and sound tags to his pictures, as those techniques are abundant and effective here. Now as this series is over forty years old, it is understandable that it's somewhat of an institution, and as such, the series has a huge array of resources to support reading available online. Here's a selection: Pinterest Meg and Mog resources, Meg and Mog WordSearch
Authors: James Bowen & Garry Jenkins
Illustrator: Gerald Kelley
Publisher: Red Fox Picture Books, 2015
Every inch of me loves this book. I love cats, buskers, rescue stories, real life stories, puppies...well not puppies, but the cat wearing a scarf makes up for that. The children were dubious at first, mainly because, their words, "the pictures are too scary, and everyone in the book is afraid", but as with all first-time yarns, once re-read a couple of times familiarity sets in, and with this book that familiarity means we know of the hero ending, the happy reunion between girl and puppy, so the 'fear' fades. What we're left with is this lovely animal-to-animal rescue mission, as brave scarf wearing former stray Bob, worries about the small shivering puppy he finds under a bush in the park. Not wanting to leave the puppy alone in the howling wind on a dark, rainy night, Bob ventures back outside to intervene. He finds the puppy, but has a hard time convincing the puppy he is 'a friend'. Turning away, Bob is chased by a 'big dog' ( the section of the book the children deem 'most scary'), but the yelping puppy comes to the aid of Bob just in the nick of time. And if that wasn't enough drama, there is still time for the puppy to be reunited with his owner.
In terms of the graphics, the simple ink and watercolour illustrations used capture the human faces in the story especially well, bringing a realism to the piece. As such the dog chase page depicts a cowering Bob at the moment the baying big dog lunges, the realistic expressions are again, just a little too scary (for the preschooler age range), but have softened for us with familiarity. The illustrations are however, very rich and beautiful, well worth a look, capturing the night sky vividly. In contrast, here's the opening two pages with nice depth of perspective over the park:
The backstory of 'Bob the Rescue Cat' is enthralling, and brought in via snippets in the intro and outro. Author James Bowen had himself faced a period of homelessness, and was making a new way in life for himself as a busker when he met stray ginger tom cat (he later named Bob) back in March 2007. Having nursed the poorly stray cat back to health, James and Bob became very attached to one another, so much so, Bob accompanied James on his stints on the streets busking. (I think this where the knitted scarf and cat harness come in). Author Garry Jenkins then helped James Bowen pen the book 'A Street Cat Named Bob' in 2012, and the further books, fame, charity work, and feature film went from there (reference: Bob the Rescue Cat back page).
At 3 years, 5 years, and 7 years respectively the children seem to be interested in the backstory of James Bowen's life as much as the rescue mission tale. They love the photos page showing Bob in several scarves and giving his owner a paws-up high-five. I think I'll try to move Alf (7) on to some of Bowen's work aimed at older children, at some point this year, as Bowen's biography has been a little 'edited' in these picture books, and I think there's hardhitting more exploratory themes to come. This is a great book for starting discussion about trust, friendship, loneliness, homeliness and bravery though; I think it has the potential to become a real classic.
BBFC Rated 12A, so not suitable for the littlies, I'll leave you with the trailer from the newly released film: A Street Cat Named Bob
The Worst Witch books ( I have a series of 4, but I believe altogether there are 6 titles)
Author and Illustrator: Jill Murphy (first published 1993, Puffin books)
So I've realised, from my posts so far, that I'm mainly concentrating on what my 1-5 year olds are enjoying. At weekends I'll try to offer recommendations for literature based on what my seven year old boy has been reading on his own, or what we're reading together.
This week we're trying to get through the last book in The Worst Witch series, as the UK's main children's channel CBBC has an adaption of the series starting this week, and he's really keen to watch it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/the-worst-witch
I read these Jill Murphy books as a child, as did some of my friends, and we have many collective fond memories. Initially then, it felt risky to want to share these books with 7 year old Alf, as if he didn't like them, I knew I would have felt miffed ( and possibly quite old!) Well for us, they haven't lost their charm, in fact I'm reading The Worst Witch books myself now with renewed applause, as I am amazed how easily they've crossed the 'gender gap'. I absolutely hate to say this, as a huge fan of modern children's literature, but I do find a very stark gendered division in my children's literary interests, but in this instance sport crazy boisterous Alf is happy to read about witch school uniforms (and there's quite a lot of description about this in the books, from tights to hats, lots of black and grey checks!)
What Alf seems to like, or maybe empathise with at this age, is the female protagonist, Mildred, feeling that she can't ever get anything perfectly 'right'. I think 7 is quite a volatile age for this, with a sudden awareness that there are inequalities in life an in the classroom. Another one of the themes in the series is friendship, particularly having loyalties, and again, I think this is a real concern or 'awakening' for some children at this age.
So far, in our current read, The Worst Witch All At Sea, there's a good sense of loyalty as Mildred plots to save her Tabby cat from his new fate as a mouse catcher in the witch Academy kitchen. Meanwhile, we hold her other secret, a trip to the seaside looming- but she can't swim!
Once again, this series really works in that the concerns of the witches echo the concerns, metaphorically at least, of real children. On a practical level, there are good illustrations every 2-3 pages, big sized print, in the editions I own ( Puffin, 2011 copies for The Book People Ltd), and short chapters, very much suitable for budding independent readers.
Each story has a slightly different adventure, but there is usually a 'calamity scene' involving broomsticks flights, getting told off by scary teachers (the stern Miss Hardbroom), and Mildred in some way saving the day in haphazard and unwitting fashion.
Rating: For the true nostalgia of enjoying these books myself as a child, I can't help by highly recommend!
If you like this you may also like: The BFG written by Roald Dahl
Also, The Book People currently have a 7 book The Worst Witch series in stock for £6.99:
The Worst Witch Series to buy-BookPeople
