And that’s before I’ve even started reading about the products! There are the Halloween Boots, available in “five lovely colours” – but all the colours are black! There’s the Little Boy Pie Mix – made proudly with the “finest natural ingredients!” And, as a special bonus, you can even get a free “Witch Watch” with every order! The very idea – that a witch might receive junk mail – is so ridiculous, so inspired, that it thrills me to open the letter even now. I read this book countless times as a kid, but no letter excited me more than this piece of witchy junk mail. On this particular day, he’s carrying an apology note to the Three Bears, a postcard addressed to a giant, and even a cease-and-desist notice for the Big Bad Wolf.īut best of all is the letter he delivers to the Wicked Witch. You see, this postman serves the fairy-tale community, and as such his postal route is unusually perilous. Published in 1986, the book is a collection of letters and envelopes, as found in the mailbag of the eponymous postman – but these are no ordinary letters. The Jolly Postman (or Other People’s Letters) is an idea so good, so wonderful, that it fills me with joy just to remember that the book exists. It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (1993) is a less-recognised masterpiece, but it’s a masterpiece nonetheless: the tale of Antonio and the brigands is so wildly inventive that I rank it as my favourite book of all time.Īnd, of course, there’s The Jolly Postman.
Each Peach Pear Plum (1978), a whimsical wander through a nursery-rhyme wood, might just be the quintessential “I spy” book for children perhaps it’s equalled only by Peepo! (1981), a book for babies that is somehow also about wartime Britain. When it comes to writing and illustrating picture books, Janet and Allan Ahlberg are truly in a class of their own.
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