Grandfather's Pencil and the Room of Stories
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Cover Story
The March cover of BfK features Dilly the Dinosaur who is 10 years old this year. Her author, Tony Bradman, is the subject of our Authorgraph this month. We are grateful to Reed Books for their help in reproducing this illustration from Susan Hellard's original artwork.
Grandfather's Pencil and the Room of Stories
As 'the boy' has finished his letter and is asleep, the pencil which lay on the paper comes to life and writes its own story. And this is the beginning of a series of stories tinged with truth, mixed with magic and related with real purpose yet ghostly fleetingness. To précis is to do this work an injustice for there is uniqueness of idea, construction and illustration here. Worthwhile though it is for information about manufacturing processes, it's far more valuable in its message about the value of stories and in its underlining of their magic. It signals also the unstoppable cyclical ways of the world. Really for 7+. I found younger sharers did feel a sense of magic and wonder, but also some confusion.