Must be time for another Golden Book… I recently discovered this book was also a favourite of my mum’s so it pre-dates my 1970s childhood. It was published in 1953. The story and pictures are by Richard Scarry, although this book is very different from his Busy Town and Best Ever Word books. Right now in our house, this is not a bad thing. We are going through a phase when the little person would read our copy of The Big Busy Book of Richard Scarry every storytime, while the big people are a little bit over it…

Rabbit and his Friends tells the tale of a Rabbit who discovers a roly-poly egg outside his hole one day. Thinking it belongs to Mrs Hen, he quickly runs to tell her. But when the egg hatches, they discover it is not a chick, but a very strange animal with a tail and fur coat like their friend the Beaver, webbed feet just like Duck, and who is shy like Squirrel. The other animals all come to meet him, but soon have to rush home to supper, leaving the strange-looking animal (who we can see is a platypus) to fend for himself. The next day, his new friends return, but cannot find him, until they come across a circus and when they are let in, they discover the platypus has a new home – the circus man has asked him to be in his cricus and given him a diving board and swimming pool. And best of all, he has lots of animal friends – and he is a little bit like them all.

Richard Scarry is famous for his anthropomorphic illustrations where animals have human characteristics. The animals in this book have clothes, but are a bit more naturalistic, and less stylised than Scarry’s more famous ones. Perhaps this is because it was one of his earlier books. But a glance at the interpretation of Rabbit shows he is clearly a relative the rabbits of Busy Town.

There is a fascinating side-by-side comparison of a select few pages from a 1963 and a 1991 edition of Richard Scarry illustrations found here. Have a look if you are interested in the decisions made to make the illustrations more politically correct – the comments made to this Flickr site are also interesting.

This lovely blog shows what looks like an earlier edition of Rabbit and his Friends which has some additional illustrations to the my 1977 edition.

There is also a lengthy and slightly tongue-in-cheek biography of Richard Scarry to be found here. It describes the process of illustration Scarry used, drawing them in pencil on frosted acetate and filling in each colour one-by-one.

I will leave the last word of this post to Richard Scarry himself:

I’m not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they’re held together by Scotch tape.

This will undoubtedly be true in our house.

When I was little we lived for two years in the UK, and amongst the books of my childhood are many very English books. Ernest Owl Starts a School and Postman Joe are two such books and are part of the Blackberry Farm series by Jane Pilgrim, first published in the early 1950s. They are amazingly timeless stories, and the pen and watercolour illustrations by F. Stocks May are beautifully vibrant. The illustration style is very realistic, and detailed. This accuracy makes the lovely additions of clothes on Mrs Nibble the rabbit, and her children, very charming. (Curiously, the rabbits, squirrels and mice are the only animals who wear clothes, although Ernest the Owl sports spectacles and Postman Joe a satchel.)

The books tell stories of life on the farm which is owned by Mr and Mrs Smiles and their children, Joy and Bob. But the main stars of the show are the animals, which include typical northern hemisphere robins and squirrels as well as the all the usual farm crew.

In a sign of the books’ era, Postman Joe tells the story of the arrival of a new animal to the farm: the Large Red Animal – an animal which breathes out smoke as it crawls along the lane. The illustration shows that this animal is in fact what we know is a tractor. Through the illustration of the family standing proudly around the Large Red Animal, and from the other animals’ reactions, you can immediately relate to the novelty of such a vehicle.

Of course there are plenty of baby animals among the residents of the farm, which is why Ernest Owl decides to start a school. I think Ernest was a very progressive teacher for the 1950s, because he structured his lessons for individual learning needs, and even designed tasks to suit personal motivations of his students: Mary Hen was taught to count marbles so that she could tell how many eggs her mother had laid! And meanwhile the bunnies learnt to write the letters of their names.

I love the way the narrative in these books includes lovely asides. When we are first introduced to Mrs Nibble’s three little bunnies, we are told they had been ‘in bed with the measles, but they would soon be better.’ Jane Pilgrim includes some gorgeous details which make the scenes believable, such as the pot-plants which are used for stools in Ernest’s school.

A few years ago, a collection of the Blackberry Farm stories were re-released in a compendium, The Complete Tales of Blackberry Farm, which is available from Amazon. This format doesn’t seem nearly as nice to hold in your hand – especially a small hand – as the individual volumes, but happily ensures a new generation of children will know and love these characters.