REVIEWS

A review of Zoe’s Boat in Books for Keeps talks about, among other things, friendship:

'This book tells young readers much about friendship’ and that ‘adventure can bring danger and risk’. Books for Keeps 

 But it doesn’t mention Zoe’s attachment to stuff – ‘all her special things’ which are washed away during her adventure at sea.  

However it was the ‘special things’ and their loss that most affected a six year old reader who said rather solemnly, “There must be a moral.”

Well, I didn’t mean to imply a moral but, on reflection, living as we do in austerity times, it might be a comfort to know that friendship is worth more than just stuff.

One day I’ll have to do a sequel for my six-year-old friend and restore all Zoe’s belongings. Perhaps by then austerity will have ended too.

LARGE HEADS AND SPINDLY LEGS

It was after being impressed by the intelligence of a six-year-old who happened to have a large head and very spindly legs that I started to draw children like that. He has become the child proto-type I carry in my head for all my child characters.

Quentin Blake, in a review of Selkie in Books For Keeps said 'there was something reminiscent of the fairyland illustrations of Dicky Doyle' in my illustrations.

Dicky Doyle was a Victorian illustrator, 1824- 1883, who also went in for large heads.  Perhaps that was what Quentin Blake was referring to. Here are two examples of Dicky Doyle's work:

And here is a page from Selkie with that child with the large head and spindly legs: