The Panda's Child

Set in a faraway forest at a time when the Great Alexander rules supreme, wealthy strangers arrive on horseback and steal a panda cub to give their king. Their raid is observed by a peasant boy, who as a tiny baby had been lost in the forest and cared for by a panda, and although he’s dazzled by the strangers’ wealth and splendour, he feels connected to the cub. An exciting and moving tale of bravery and adventure follows, as the boy tricks the horsemen, makes off with the cub and is rescued from the strangers’ retribution by the timely appearance of an avenging tiger.

Perhaps best known as the illustrator of The Lost Wordsfor which she won the Kate Greenaway Medal, Jackie Morris is also an acclaimed author and uses words as delicately and powerfully as she paints. In The Panda’s Child, her imaginative evocation of people living in harmony with their natural surroundings is affecting and compelling. Told in three chapters, the text is carefully crafted to provide an immersive listening or reading experience for children ready for a longer story. There are ten text-only spreads, but a large clear font, centrally-aligned short sentences and plenty of white space makes them easy to read and share.

This substantial, well-presented gift book has an eye-catching binding, and Cathy Fisher’s tender, insightful artwork draws readers into a vanished world and brings it vividly to life. There’s a sense of realism and wonder about her illustrations, which were created with pencil, charcoal, watercolour paints, inks and crayons, and they will please audiences who like to explore and understand the natural world.

However, there’s something about the interaction between words and images that doesn’t work as well as it could at certain points. Sometimes a picture reveals information or resolves emotional tension before the text has caught up; sometimes it’s the text that has already moved on. And there are images that, although beautiful, don’t sit well within the narrative, perhaps because they encapsulate the essence of the story as a whole. Readers who are fully immersed in the story or are simply browsing the artwork may not notice these moments (or be bothered if they do) but those who are sensitive to images and what they’re saying may find such pictures distracting. They can also cause a subtle sense of dislocation that won’t help uncommitted readers to get lost in what could be an utterly absorbing and fascinating story world.