Miss Llewellyn Jones (Elaine Forrestal, illus. Moira Court, Fremantle Press, $16.95 pb, ISBN 9781921361173, May) ***

Repetitive in plot and language, this first picture book from a well-known writer of novels for children encourages the very young reader to anticipate outcomes by following action on almost wordless pages. Despite the title, Miss Llewellyn-Jones is not the heroine--rather a resourceful teddy bear brings about an end to Miss L-J’s inability to learn from previous experience. She lives in a windy place but persists in hanging out her washing though—‘flip flap’—knickers, jeans, t-shirt and socks fly off into the wider world. There is fun in tracing the journey of the clothes to a scarecrow’s head, a donkey, a magpie nest and a sailboat. Pre-readers will be able to ‘read’ the illustrations and be rewarded with a twist at the end when teddy takes a more controlled flight via an umbrella that observant readers will have noticed earlier. Court’s illustrations are highly stylised but full of vigour and emotion. Formal placement of images aid young eyes and multiple readings will reveal further detail.

Kerry White is a bibliographer and a major contributor to The Source, an online resource

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

Tags: elaine forrestal