The wordless final image shows the bedroom from the very same angle as the first view of the bedroom, with both children fast asleep. It is therefore a cause for much dismay when after collecting his sister Bella from school, Dave realises that Dogger is no longer with him. I have derived so much fulfilment from my long career, first as an illustrator of other artists' stories and then creating my own. If you enjoy the illustrations of Shirley Hughes, you may like to check out watercolours by John Lovett, Australian artist. She also collaborated with her daughter, Clara Vulliamy, on the Dixie O'Day series; which saw Shirley with an illustrator for the first time with Shirley writing the text and Clara creating the illustrations.

To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. Our own copy as a child had been cancelled from a local library and was covered in yellowing sellotape. A truly outstanding story which I have shared with my own children, with many children I have taught , and now with my grandchildren. When my son went on a school trip away as a small boy I made him a miniature version of his teddy to travel with so there’d be no risk of losing his much-loved companion.If represented by animals, the female animals will have heavier eyelashes, redder lips or a bow on their head. However, he is devasted when his beloved toy is sold to another child, but a selfless act of kindness from Bella ensures that all ends well.

Lucy Mangan in Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading says that now that she's a mom, she cries every time she reads this. Her early work included illustrations for Dorothy Edwards' My Naughty Little Sister, with the first picture book she created being Lucy And Tom's Day in 1960. Yet apart from pink pyjamas, Bella is dressed androgynously — her femaleness is not important to the story — she is first and foremost a kindly older sibling, and I really appreciate this about the character. Luckily, his sister wins a big teddy that she chooses to exchange with the girl to get her brother’s friend back. Historical fiction novelist Hazel Gaynor put: 'Thank you, Shirley Hughes, for so many precious hours with your stories and my small boys.

Shirley Hughes has won the Other Award, the Eleanor Farjeon Award, and the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration twice, for Dogger in 1977 and for Ella's Big Chance in 2003. Bella is turning somersaults, endearingly, and reassures Dave that she didn’t like that big teddy anyway because ‘his eyes were too staring’. Comparing Bella to modern depictions of girlhood in picture books, today’s young readers are used to the convention that girls must look a certain way: They’ll probably be wearing an article of clothing that is pink. Dogger won the public vote and thus it was named the all-time "Greenaway of Greenaways" on 21 June 2007. Only two years ago, in her nineties, she revived the heartwarming tale more than 40 years after the original book with Dogger's Christmas.

This is a lovely book with a simple story that is still relevant over 30 years after it was first published. In the meantime Dave’s big sister Bella is delighted with herself as she has just won a shiny new teddy bear with a shiny blue bow in the raffle. But Shirley Hughes also makes use of the visual chronotope, in which the reader sees several scenes, like different frames in a film reel, and is expected to understand that these are not the same-looking characters doing different things, but the very same characters depicted at different times. The story of how Dave loses his beloved Dogger was always a favourite, especially with daughter number one, who had her own traumatic experience of losing Benny.Every page you turn you get a warm glow from the well constructed tale and the beautiful illustrations. It does concern me slightly that the spoilt brat trope is usually a girl dressed like this which — Bella notwithstanding — can sometimes morph into femme phobia. She wrote two novels for older children, Hero on a Bicycle, about a 13-year-old Italian boy during the occupation of Florence, and Whistling in the Dark, set during the Liverpool Blitz. A post on Hughes' Twitter on the day she died quoted a passage from her book on Alfie Weather, showing illustrations of his mother helping him through a stream. Encourage your child to think about what their favourite toy is and what activities they like to do with that toy?