As I have mentioned before in ‘When We Were Little’ posts (here and here) we lived for a time in England when I was little. Rupert the bear was another of the English characters that is indelibly linked to my memories of our time there. I still have a copy of a Daily Express Rupert Annual, which I think was given to me one Christmas.

Having now done some research into the Rupert story, I am blown away by the endurance of this ever-so-English little bear.

Rupert Bear first appeared in 1920 in the Daily Express comic strips by Mary Courtel. In an incredible feat of longevity for the world of the print media, the Rupert Bear strips continue to this day. The artist has changed several times, and one of the most significant storytellers and artists responsible for Rupert was Alfred Bestall, who held the reins from 1935 to 1974. Each year, a Rupert Annual is published, and my copy is the 1981 hardcover edition.

One of the most distinctive aspects of the Rupert stories is the story-telling format. This is not a regular cartoon comprising pictures and speech bubbles. A complete Rupert story is told over several pages of an Annual. Each page consists of a simple heading and four or five illustrations, and the illustrations are captioned by four pairs of verse. At the bottom of each page, a paragraph of prose repeats the story again, which means that the story can actually be read on four levels.

As a reader, it’s a slightly unnerving format, and the verse is often slightly ‘off’. But it is interesting – and means that children of different ages can enjoy the story. These days the first thing I think of is what a nightmare this must be to copywrite and edit – how restrictive must those word limits for each written element be…

Rupert himself is said to epitomise traditional British public school values. He lives in an idyllic English village and, with his friend Bill the Badger, has a series of unexpected  magical adventures. With their gorgeously distinctive outfits and occasionally their leather rucksacks, Rupert and Bill always get home safely to Mrs Bear, who never seems the slightest bit perturbed by their adventures.

Clearly, the character of a newspaper comic who has been around for nearly ninety years is iconic. Paul McCartney’s inspiration for the song ‘We All Stand Together’ (the ‘Frog Song’) was apparently his realisation that something he loved so much as a child was also a favourite with his own children. The clip includes animation of Rupert Bear. Deservedly Rupert has a fervent fan group, the Followers of Rupert Bear, and there is also a Rupert and the Frog Song website…

Katie has mentioned the beautiful illustrations of Margaret Tempest before in her When We Were Little post on Allison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit. It was interesting because that post generated so many comments from fellow children’s literature lovers who remembered the series about the Little Grey Rabbit and many who in particular loved the illustrations.

Margaret Tempest began illustrating in the 1920’s and illustrated the Little Grey Rabbit and Fuzzypeg the Hedgehog books for Allison Uttley. It is interesting that in some reading I have done on the Grey Rabbit books it is said that Allison Uttley and Margaret Tempest would argue as to who should take the credit for the characters’ success.

Margaret Tempest did write and illustrate 20 books on her own and one of those is very dear to me. My creased little copy of The Little Lamb of Bethlehem, first published 1957,  is treasured as it holds many memories of childhood Christmases.

It is the story of the birth of Jesus told through the eyes of a lamb who follows the star of Bethlehem to the manger. On his return to the hills from witnessing this great event he spreads the word to the birds who carry the message throughout the world.

The story is sweet but it’s certainly Tempest’s gorgeous, subtle watercolours that make this little book so special.

My copy of Katie has lost it’s dust jacket and is falling apart- it has been very well loved.

Written by Richenda and David Martin and published in 1974 it is based on the true story of the authors black and white kitten named Katie.

‘Mr and Mrs Dodds lived in the Australian countryside with their son, Ian. Mr Dodds wrote books and Mrs Dodds taught in the little bush school. In summer the big wide shady veranda of their house was also the schoolroom.’

Ian is given a kitten one day by the post mistress in their small town and he calls her Katie. She is a tabby cat with a white bib and four white socks plus a white tip on the end of her tail. Katie likes to snuggle in warm cosy places and one morning when Mr Dodds is getting ready for a trip to the big city Katie falls asleep in his suitcase.

And so the story goes; poor Mr Dodds is stuck in the big city with a kitten in his case and a meeting with his editor imminent and meanwhile back at home Ian, his mother and the school children are frantically searching for the cat.

Silly Mr Dodds tries the police station to get some help with the kitten and then he can’t get a hotel room because the town is full ‘…on account of the big cattle sales this week’ In the end, alls well as he leaves the kitten with a friend’s family, attends his meeting and eventually takes Katie home to the country.

Although this was a cute story I have realised that it’s the illustrations that really make this picture book special. The story is quite long, and a little strange but it is Noela Young’s gorgeous illustrations of this curious little kitten that I fell in love with ‘when I was little’ and fell in love with again now. Some stories and characters I remember vividly from childhood and I have found that that is also true with illustrations.

This illustration of Katie the kitten asleep in a dolls pram with paws wrapped around a dolls bottle is one that I absolutely remember fondly.

Noela Young also illustrated the classic Muddle-Headed Wombat series of books written by Ruth Park. Katie is now out of print.

There were so many comments on Katie’s When We Were Little Post about Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Everybody remembers that book with so much fondness.

There is an amazing museum in the UK called Seven Stories that is devoted to children’s literature and the latest exhibition is of Judith Kerr’s work.

Although I’m not planning a trip to the UK any time soon – unfortunately! Seven Stories is a lovely website to visit for anyone who loves children’s books.

The detail in this beautiful screen print of an original papercut called a Squirrel Village instantly reminded me of the lovely posts Katie has done in the past of Need a House? Call Ms. Mouse and the Alison Uttley books. 

Artist Cindy Mindy Pindy has some beautiful work in her Etsy store here.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea is one of those books that I don’t recall having on my bookshelf as a child, but it nevertheless made a big impression on me and I remember it very fondly. It has been on my mental wishlist for ages, and when some colleagues gave me a bookstore gift voucher before I went on maternity leave last month, I used it to buy two picture books. One had to be a beautiful hardback edition of this book.

Rowan is into tigers in a big way at the moment – he is obsessed with David Attenborough documentaries – so we have both loved reading this book together.

A little girl called Sophie opens the door one day to find a big, furry, stripey tiger on her doorstep. When the tiger asks if he can join them for tea, Sophie’s mummy invites him in. But the tiger turns out to be very, very hungry – he not only eats all the food and drink on the tea table but proceeds to raid the kitchen, eating all the food on the stove, in the fridge, and even all the water from the taps.

Eventually the tiger leaves, and Sophie and her mummy are left to figure out what to do – there is nothing for supper and Sophie can’t even have a bath because all the water has been drunk from the taps…

First published in 1968, The Tiger Who Came to Tea is gloriously old-fashioned. Taking place in the days of the milkman and the grocery boy, it is a time when daddy’s supper was prepared in time for his arrival home and going out for dinner was practically unheard of. I love Sophie and her mummy’s outfits; Sophie’s purple pinafore and checkerboard tights are perfect!

I think one of the reasons I loved this book was the fact that it presented elements of fantasy as real. The scenario of a tiger appearing at the door appears perfectly reasonable, as is the idea that the water can be drunk from the taps. When Sophie and her mummy go to the supermarket to replenish supplies, they make sure that they buy a big tin of tiger food. What else do you buy in case a tiger were to stop by?!

The text is beautifully understated – I especially love the page showing the family walking down the High Street on their way out to supper. You can tell how special the outing is to Sophie, how rare it is for her to be out in the street after dark…

So they went out in the dark, and all the street lamps were lit, and all the cars had their lights on, and they walked down the road to a cafe.

Judith Kerr also wrote the series of picture books about Mog the cat, and I only realised tonight that she was author of a young adult novel that I dearly loved, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. If you are familiar with her books, you should definitely read this lovely interview with Judith published in the Telegraph.

||The Tiger Who Came to Tea is available from Amazon||

A guest post by one of our favourite bloggers, Scribbler, founder and writer extraordinaire of the utterly fabulous blog called Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves. She is mum to a 4-year-old aficianado of vintage kids’ books.

It’s special to me when I discover that one of my favourite childhood books was also a favourite of my mum’s. This was the case with Rabbit And His Friends, which I posted about here, and with the book I’m posting about today: A Little House of Your Own.

Everyone has to have a little house of his own.
Every boy has to have his own little house.
Every girl should have a little house all to herself.

In this book a ‘house’ is a metaphor for a space of one’s own – it doesn’t need to have a roof and four walls – it can be a cardboard box or a treehouse or the space under a dining table. No matter what place you find, it is important for every person to have a space that they can create and retreat to. As a child or an adult, it is an incredibly affirming idea.

The copy mum has is a 1961 reprint of the original 1957 publication, written by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers and illustrated by Irene Haas. The endpapers are stained and at one point the jacket became so damaged that mum resorted to cutting a portion of it and sticking it to the front.

My childhood memories focus mostly on the illustrations of the book – which evoked so strongly in my imagination possible scenarios for creating new cubby houses and hiding places. The detail is exquisite and even now I can’t help but look at these pictures in awe of the simplicity of the form – black and white, pen and ink with incredible detail and variation in light and dark rendered on each page.

I loved the book’s message when I was little – and the very empowering feeling it gave me. It validated the desire for even a small child to have some place of their very own. This message has the same power, and a different significance as an adult. The following passage resonates particularly now:

Your papa is in his own little house when he is behind his newspaper.
He wants everyone to leave him alone. He doesn’t want anyone to bother him.
No children.
No grownups.

When your mama takes a nap it is just as though she has gone into her own little house and shut the doors and the windows.
She wants everyone to leave her alone. She doesn’t want anyone to talk to her or to ask her questions.
If you tickle her she will wake up -
and then she won’t be in her own little secret house anymore.
But that really isn’t fair, is it?

Too true!!

I’ve just discovered that cocoon couture also blogged about this book, just a couple of weeks ago… You can see the post (with more internal images and a scan of our original cover) here.

I have never forgotten these words…

‘Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo’

I’m sure there are so many others of you that also remember and can recite this, the name of the little boy who falls in the well, whose little brother takes so long to say his brother’s name and to get him help. The story, written to sound like a folktale, supposedly tells of why the Chinese give their children short names.

I vividly remember chanting ‘Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo’ in primary school and know that it was read to us many times. Published in 1968, it is one of the absolute classics of my generation and it was interesting to see it featured on We Love You So - the blog dedicated to Spike Jonze and the Where The Wild Things Are film. Like the Sendak book, Tikki Tikki Tembo is also a picture book that has gathered a cult following and inspires passionate reminiscences.

There is controversy, as it seems comes with many of the picture books published in the 60s and 70s. It is said that the story is making fun of the Chinese and their names and it is also debated whether the tale is Japanese rather than Chinese.

The evidence of its continuted popularity however is obvious with a search on Youtube, with so many different tellings of the story listed from a fantastic shadow puppet play to numerous kindergarten performances.

Like my review on The Story Of Ping much of the impact of this book on me was the beautiful illustrations that give the book a lovely, even if false, sense of traditional China.

||Tikki Tikki Tembo is available in the We Heart Books store||

A guest post by Sue, Mum to Katie, and Nanou to Rowan.

Some of the books I particularly remember from my childhood were the special ones that my paternal grandmother, known affectionately as Marty, kept in a wardrobe for visiting grandchildren. I visited quite frequently, often staying during school holidays and I have vivid memories of these times and being snugly curled up in a very comfortable bed with a selection of books for reading ‘in the morning’ before Marty got up. Books were important to her and an obvious presence in her home. She valued them greatly and indulged in purchasing them from the Folio Society, a luxury she couldn’t really afford. Although we didn’t get many presents from her, when we did they were often books.

All the children’s books in Marty’s wardrobe were produced in the late 1940s or early 1950s and so all now suffer from yellowed paper which is quite embrittled; most have been read so many times that they have been mended in the past with Sellotape, and so are quite stained along the spine edges.

My favourites were the titles from Peg Matby’s Ben and Bella series and Marty had a number of them. However, there were also four books which now are of interest looking back as an adult and with my ‘social historian’s hat’ on. They are the Adventure series produced by Barker & Company and printed in Australia “by the New ‘FANTASCOPIC’ Method.” (I haven’t been able to find out exactly what this method was, but it supposedly produced more realistic colour.) Two of the four titles have been passed down to me: The Zoo Garden Mystery by John Tombs and Excitement on Elf Island by Elsie Sheppard; both are held in the National Library of Australia and listed as printed in 1948. Other titles are The Story of Thought Castle and Fairy Grandmother’s Story. There is no mention of illustrators and as the style differs, I imagine that Tombs and Sheppard were both author and illustrator. A number of internet sites list the titles as rare and have them for sale, for widely varying prices, but most do not seem to have stood the test of time any better than mine.

A re-reading of the stories is somewhat disappointing. I did like these books as a child, although now I cannot imagine why! Both have the text pre-eminent in a central box on each page with illustrations awkwardly placed surrounding them. Both are text heavy and John Tombs particularly tends to over-write. The language is very dated and at times overly moralistic, but what does interest me now is seeing the resurgence of an Australian orientation, post-World War 2. This is obvious in the case of the The Zoo Garden Mystery. My copy has koalas in a gum tree on the cover and indigenous fauna mixed with exotic zoo creatures central to the story. This focus is less obvious in Excitement on Elf Island, but the gum trees are there and are something that the publisher feels the need to explain.

Time and perspective change. The importance of these books was not intrinsic. What was important was the love of books that they helped develop.