The Friends of Emily Culpepper

From the first few pages of this book it seems that we are in for a fairly straightforward tale of village life but then we meet Emily Culpepper and discover that her bottling talents are not confined to making jam; she so enjoys talking to her three friends, the postman, the milkman and the plumber, that she shrinks them down to size and keeps them in jars too. She does let them out of course to eat their lunch or play in the old doll's house but, even so, the villagers understandably take a dim view, so the village policeman pays her a visit and Emily has to let her friends go. But she still wants someone to talk to... Having read and enjoyed this macabre yet understated story there are fresh delights as the reader discovers the wealth of clues as to the kind of person Emily is in the hilarious, detailed illustrations which have a hint of Anno and Blake about them.