posted on 19 Mar 2018

My Worst Book Ever by Allan Ahlberg illustrated by Bruce Ingman

It’s been a little while since I fell so completely in love with a book at first read in the way that I did with this one. Ahlberg is, of course, a prolific and hugely talented storyteller and here he’s given us a privileged peek into the process of taking a story from idea to finished book – and he’s let us see just what can go wrong along the way! And I have to say it’s a wonderful little adventure.

Sitting one day in his writing shed he has the idea for a new children’s picture book he thinks he’ll call Crocodile Snap! and sets about getting his words down on paper. Everything is looking promising until a string of minor mishaps beset him – a cat, a cup of coffee, a forgotten family holiday…. And when he returns, snails that have made their lunch of his first drafts.

But, not to be deterred, he reaches that satisfying moment – the end. Now, off to his great friend Bruce to do the illustrations. But, Bruce has other ideas – too many crocodile books he says and draws a hippo instead. Then a small child with an ice-lolly decides to climb across the drawings.

No hippo – it must be a crocodile!

So the crocodile gets drawn and it’s off to the publisher. And now the publisher wants to play with it. Suddenly they want to turn the crocodile to a dinosaur and give the pages a fancy font.

No dinosaur or fancy font!

Finally just as he thinks he’s got his way and the book goes to the printer – another disaster. The printer’s daughter, with her chocolatey hands, mixes up the final draft and some of the rejected versions and the printer doesn’t notice.

Disaster. The mixed up book goes off to the shops. His worst Book Ever!

Then, rather wonderfully on two adjacent fold-out pages, Ahlberg shows us what the original book should have looked like and what the disastrous mixed-up version is like. And, at the end, as he contemplates his misery at the catastrophe that has befallen him, he suddenly gets a new idea – and off we go on the creative log-flume ride that is Ahlberg’s imagination.

What a great idea – books within books within books. This is a story that will give great pleasure to readers of all ages ( and I’m proof of that) but I have to say that Bruce Ingman’s drawings are a huge part of the overall experience. He has a disarmingly simple style but, like most great illustrators, he can capture the most complex expressions and emotions in the stroke of a pen.

Oh, and by the way, Ahlberg was quite right. It just had to be a crocodile.

 

Terry Potter

March 2018

 

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