Me and You is a fiendishly clever take on Goldilocks. I’ve never been too keen on all that fussing the bears get up to when they discover their porridge and their chairs, not to mention the beds.
But this, this is more fun. We’ve never thought too much about where Goldilocks came from, or where she ran back to, have we? At least I haven’t. I’ve concentrated on the porridge and the sleeping, which are both very attractive things.
Now the children’s laureate Anthony Browne has come up with the background to Goldilocks the girl. She has her own house, even if not as nice as the bear house. She has her own mummy. She is just temporarily displaced, which is how she comes to sample the bears’ living standard.
This book has two sets of pictures. There are the traditional pictures of the bears, complete with captions, on the right hand page. On the left we get several smaller pictures of Goldilocks in realistic cartoon style, but without words. Very beautiful.
And I can tell you that Daddy Bear is a coward.
(Apologies for the photo quality, but I really wanted to show a page rather than the cover.)
The Occasional Bookwitch 
We brought the kids to see Anthony last week on his visit to Belfast and he was superb – and absolutely lovely when they had a chat with him beforehand. This was their first experience of meeting a writer and he couldn’t have been nicer.
Am jealous. Just found out I seem to have missed him when he came to a place near me.
Oh, this one looks appealing.
i went to his talk at the LBF and he spoke about how he was experimenting with colours and styles so that he’s mixing his more well known magritte like elaborate style with more simple lines and primary colours.