What Shall We Do, Blue Kangaroo?

Chichester Clark is one of our finest artist/authors, and Blue Kangaroo is rapidly becoming an all-time classic children’s character. This latest story of Lily and her little blue friend contains much to enjoy on many levels and is utterly enchanting. Chichester Clark achieves a magical luminosity and richness in her pictures through her mastery of the medium of concentrated liquid watercolour and pencil-crayon. She is sparing in her employment of full bleed double-page spreads, preferring to develop the narrative through loosely framed single page images, thus increasing the impact of the spreads when they arrive. A sun-saturated town street filled with plane trees and deliciously quirky cars (I’ve always said girls can’t draw cars) is totally uplifting, while further on another spread shows Lily dashing to rescue her toys from a summer shower. You can almost smell the wet grass. The author is somehow able to keep this richness of colour even in the beautifully atmospheric night scenes. Hidden away in all this enchantment are gentle messages about independence and learning through play. A delightful book.