The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters

I have never met anyone, child or adult, that hasn’t adored The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters. First published in 1986, Janet and Allan Ahlberg created one of the best known and most popular children’s books ever. Together they created the concept of combining text with real letters to be opened and read within a picture book. 

Once upon a bicycle, So they say,

A Jolly Postman came one day, From the hills And far away..

With a letter for the Three Bears.

The story follows the lovely ‘jolly’ postman as he delivers letters to familiar fairytale characters. Mr and Mrs Bear receive a sincere apology letter from Goldilocks, Cinderella gets a sample from the Royal Publisher of the book they have created to celebrate her marriage to the Prince and the wolf dressed as ‘grandma’ gets a letter from Little Red Riding-Hood’s solicitors demanding a cease in harassment. The humor in this book is fantastic and it works for so many age levels – little ones like the gorgeous illustrations and the familiarity of the characters and older children and adults can enjoy the very clever puns.

In an article in the Guardian in 2006, Allan Ahlberg explained that the concept had been born from his 2-year-old daughter Jessie’s fascination for opening their mail. I can really relate to this at the moment because Ned just loves posting letters as well as opening them. As it was his birthday recently I really noticed the excitement that he had from opening birthday cards and he was just as excited about the cards as he was about the presents.

Actually does the excitement of receiving mail ever go away? Well maybe not getting bills! I LOVE coming home to find a parcel, a magazine, a pretty catalogue or a postcard in the mail!

This week I came across a simply beautiful post on the blog Oh, hello friend that mentioned author Danni’s love for the Postman books. This week she had created her own envelope book for her partner, here are some gorgeous photos…

Have a look at Danni’s post for more photos and read about her memories of the Postman books.

I was thinking about how lovely it would be to create a book like this for or with a child.

||The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters available online from Readings||