Let’s call it the Rebel Girls effect. The enormous appetite for Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s first collection of illustrated tales about mighty, real-life women, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, sparked a publishing revolution in 2016, shaking up how biography is presented to children. Out went the dusty textbook tone in favour of a bright and fresh style. Almost a decade on, kids’ bookshelves heave with lively, true tales – from the bestselling Little People, Big Dreams series to the excellent picture book version of David Olusoga’s Black and British.
Yet, thrillingly, the innovations keep coming. Dear Vincent (Thames & Hudson), by art historian Michael Bird and illustrator Ella Beech, draws on correspondence between Vincent van Gogh and his loving brother Theo to offer, Bird says, a “glimpse into a happy and creative time in the artist’s life” when he moved to southern France – told via snippets of letters and the very relatable closeness of the two brothers.
You could argue that the themes of Van Gogh’s paintings – flowers, night skies – are already perfectly accessible to kids, well documented and in need of no more introduction, but this book is an absolute gem, with a great understanding of its audience. When Van Gogh is packing to leave Paris and considering how to fit all his art supplies in his bag, he exclaims: “I know… I can leave out my toothbrush and socks!” Later, painting the local postman’s portrait, he tells him to sit very still and not “jiggle your legs or wiggle your beard”. Beech’s exquisite artwork is characterful and warm, conjuring up the well-known visual elements of Van Gogh’s life, from his gingery beard to his blue bedroom, and of course those majestic sunflowers, while never falling into pastiche.
It’s 20 years since the release of Oliver Jeffers’s now globally renowned debut picture book, How to Catch a Star, which introduced readers to his star-loving, moon-faced boy in a stripy top who, in later books, formed an unlikely friendship with a penguin. In Where to Hide a Star (HarperCollins, October) we find the boy, the penguin and the star he successfully brought home at the end of the original book playing hide-and-seek. But the game goes horribly wrong when the star goes missing.
Jeffers has not lost his lovely knack for weaving fantastical elements into depictions of everyday life, and by introducing a new character here – a young girl whose experience of wishing for a star exactly mirrors the boy’s – he deftly acknowledges that the universal appeal of his original book lay partly in the fact that kids everywhere gaze in wonder at the same night sky. The two children team up for an adventure that will not disappoint.
Last month also saw the release of Jeffers’s latest collaboration with Sam Winston, The Dictionary Story (Walker). Sad because she doesn’t tell a proper story like her fellow books, one day Dictionary decides to bring her words to life. Soon, Alligator is pursuing Donut through the pages, causing Queen to slip on Soap and chaos to reign. A boundary-pushing ode to the wonders of language, Jeffers’s illustrations rip and bounce through actual dictionary entries thanks to Winston’s clever typography and design. Close reading really pays off: the dictionary entries are full of wit and mischief.
Another author-illustrator bringing his A-game this autumn is David Litchfield, whose The Dinosaur Next Door (Magic Cat) brilliantly combines the joys of dinosaurs and cake. Pint-sized palaeontologist Liz is certain that her moustachioed neighbour and local star baker Mr Wilson is actually a brachiosaurus in disguise, so she consults a grownup expert on the matter, with unintended consequences. And while there may not be an ounce of biographical truth in this particular book, I promise you’ll be rooting for Mr Wilson all the same.