Hogsel and Gruntel
Digital version – browse, print or download
Books for Keeps is packed with articles, interviews comment and, of course, reviews.
You can read the whole issue online here, for free!
How to print the digital edition of Books for Keeps: click on this PDF file link - click on the printer icon in the top right of the screen to print.
BfK Newsletter
Receive the latest news & reviews direct to your inbox!
Cover Story
The cover of this issue is a design incorporating illustrations from four books illustrated by the subject of our Authorgraph, Ian Beck. The top left illustration is from Five Little Ducks (Orchard), the top right from Poppy and Pip's Picnic (to be published Autumn '97 by HarperCollins), the bottom left from The Owl and the Pussy-cat (Transworld) and the bottom right from Home Before Dark (to be published September '97 by Scholastic). Ian Beck's Picture Book (Hippo) is reviewed in this issue.
Beck talks to BfK's interviewer, Julia Eccleshare, also in this issue. His distinctive decorative style with its sensitive pen line and cross hatching has a nostalgic but sometimes also a surreal quality - he describes it as 'a look that is floating, strong and wistful all at the same time'.
Thanks to Orchard, HarperCollins, Transworld and Scholastic for their help in producing this composite cover.
PDF
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend
Hogsel and Gruntel
Liz Graham-Yooll
Dick King-Smith, well known for his own original animal stories including The Sheep Pig (now immortalised in celluloid as Babe) takes a pig's-eye view of some familiar fairy stories. Goldipig and the Three Bears and Little Red Riding Pig are just two of five short stories and a poem originally published as Dick King-Smith's Triffic Pig Book in 1991. This 1996 edition has new but rather rudimentary colour illustrations which comprise about 40% of the book. Though the stories are humorous I have great reservations about it really serving as a 'Real It Yourself' book 'just right for reading alone'. There are few children at the read-it-yourself stage who will appreciate the rather adult humour in some of the tales. Sharing a book like this, however, with a child of seven years old or so could be fun.