Yummy: My Favourite Nursery Stories

This large format book is a scrumptiously joyful celebration of eight favourite traditional tales illustrated in Cousins’ inimitable style. Her artwork with its bold, black outlines, filled in with brilliant colours and just enough pattern to engage the eye, has huge child-appeal. The illustrations are set sometimes upon a white background but occasionally on black, red, green or yellow so that turning a page can invoke a catching of the breath. Whilst the text for each tale is quite dense – the book runs to 124 pages! – key phrases within each story are handwritten in huge letters perfect for encouraging early reading skills. We hear familiar phrases from traditional retellings: ‘Grandma, what big eyes you have’, ‘Who’s that, tripping over my bridge?’, ‘Let me come in!’ Yet the retelling has a fresh simplicity making it delightful to read aloud, whilst the illustrations ensure the young reader will linger over each spread. In telling of her pleasure in creating this collection, Cousins is quoted as saying ‘My paintbrushes were practically dancing on the paper’. This is a book overflowing with magic, a perfect marrying of the language of story with art, and it will surely become a future classic.