Illustrated Children’s Books

Only on the Contents Page do we learn that the people involved in this appalling volume are Peter Hunt, who is a Professor Emeritus, Lisa Sainsbury, an expert, and Anthony Browne (or possibly ‘Bowne’ – see page 34), a Laureate. The latter has only one page in which to display the errors and illiteracy that are to characterize the volume as a whole – I’m afraid that he does so – and it is not altogether easy to distribute blame for all the hopelessly muddled pages that are to follow. Errors and idiocies abound on most of those that contain text (eg. Caldecott ‘one of the major illustrators of the late eighteenth century’, Kipling, in large ultra bold type, ‘the Poet... of the common solider’) and I see no point in wasting valuable BfK wordage on any more examples. The book is worthless and how those eminent people allowed their names to become attached to it is a mystery.