Look What I've Got

There are some picture book opening pages which are absolutely perfect. 'Mr Magnolia has only one boot' is one; so is 'The hour was late' and 'Once upon a time there was an elephant'. The essentials are one obvious, simple sentence, an illustration that says much more about that sentence than the words can and a certainty that there is more to know if you turn the page. Look What I've Got has such an opening. 'Sam went for a walk' it begins and we see him, stolid, hands in pockets, walking past a wall. Looking at the wall we are immediately drawn into a strangely ordinary and ordinarily strange world; the world of Anthony Browne, in fact, in which a little boy's encounters with a braggard can be transformed into a triumph of imagination against the barbarian. This re-issue of one of Anthony Browne's early classics will be welcomed as a reminder of the layers of meaning and intensity of experience that pictures and words can achieve when in the hands of a master.