Children’s books for Christmas | 1 December 2016

Maurice Sendak, no mean judge, observed that William Nicholson’s Clever Bill was ‘among the few perfect picture books for children’. I’d go along with that if I didn’t think Nicholson’s other picture book, The Pirate Twins, even better, with its lovely opening, ‘One evening, on the sands, Mary found the pirate twins.’

Now Clever Bill (Egmont, £9.99) is back in print, 90 years after it was first published, so you can see for yourself what a genius little book it is. Nicholson (better known as the illustrator of The Velveteen Rabbit) wrote very few words, but what a tremendous narrative it is. Mary is invited to visit her aunt, and in the rush leaves behind her friend, the toy soldier clever Bill Davis. He sets off in pursuit. The pictures use a limited palette but, within bold rectangular or oval frames, they are masterly in their vigour. You could regard this as a feminist text, given Mary’s terrific authority; then again, you could just see it as a charming story.

Another feisty little girl features in Charlotte Voake’s illustrations for Eleanor Farjeon’s Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep (Walker, £9.99), about Elsie, who liberates her village through her skipping. These are delicate, haunting pictures, perfect for an odd, captivating story.

Quentin Blake and Emma Chichester Clarke are splendid illustrators, and in their joint work, Three Little Monkeys (Harper Collins, £12.99), Blake goes in for cross-dressing, providing the text for Chichester Clarke’s spirited but elegant pictures. The two combine splendidly in this story about three bad monkeys whose saucer-eyed looks belie their capacity for trouble.

An unlikely recent success was Drew Daywalt’s brilliantly funny The Day the Crayons Quit, a series of letters of complaint from a child’s crayons to their owner. Now it is followed by The Day the Crayons Came Home (Harper Collins, £7.99),