Night-time Tale

A toddler runs to his mama’s bed for midnight reassurance. What a strange dream he has had – of a gingerbread house, a witch, a girl visiting her grandma (disconcertingly hairy and grey), a giant and a beanstalk. Older children looking into Brown’s characteristically big illustrations in autumnal colours, will find them unobtrusively but reassuringly framed like the pages of someone else’s book, and will be excited rather than alarmed by baby’s story. They will know where the parts of this bad dream come from. There is nothing particularly new in Brown’s book either in concept or execution. She joins a growing band of picture book artists who have followed in the Ahlbergs’ spot the fairy tale footsteps. Still, this is a first class illustrator, who produces some wonderful movement and atmosphere in her double-page spreads and who has a surprise at the end even for the most knowing of her child audience.