There can be few author-illustrators whose books are remembered – and still read – with such affection as those of Edward Ardizzone. And affection is the keynote of this charming memoir, The Young Ardizzone, which brings alive in words and pictures the comfortable Edwardian world in which Ardizzone grew up.
The author of the ever-popular Little Tim and Lucy books (and illustrator of many more) begins his story in 1905, when he was 5 and his mother brought him and his two sisters home to England from Haiphong, where his father was a telegraph engineer. Having settled them in the remote Suffolk village of East Bergholt she returned to the Far East for three years, leaving them in the care of their maternal grandmother, a much-loved but somewhat alarming figure whose sudden inexplicable outbursts of temper could turn her face almost literally black with rage.
Thereafter, like many colonial children, the young Ardizzones led a somewhat peripatetic existence, punctuated by visits from their mother – once with a surprise new brother and sister in tow. But they grew up with a full complement of cheerful young bachelor uncles, great aunts and eccentric family friends – all beautifully and often poignantly captured in Ardizzone’s deceptively simple prose and delicately humorous drawings. This book is a must for fans of Ardizzone, young and old, and a perfect introduction for those who haven’t yet discovered him.
Something Always Turned Up
Of course The Young Ardizzone is not a children’s book, rather a book about childhood intended for adults, but here, as in the Lucy and Little Tim series, the integration of words and images is...
Read moreThe Young Ardizzone | East Bergholt
Old memories are strange in the sense that one never can be sure how true they are. The most vivid of them are probably fairly accurate, even allowing for time and nostalgia to make the inevitable...
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