Clouds by Peggy Blakeley illustrated by Kazuo Niizaka

Tuesday Treasure

This is one of my all time most most most FAVOURITE books in the whole world!  I had a copy of this book in every Primary school library (there are four of them) where I worked as a Teacher-Librarian.  Very sadly the last copy was disposed by the replacement staff in my last (former) school library.  A few months ago I was browsing through used books and yippee I found a copy of Clouds - a used copy from a library in the UK. It arrived today and I am smiling a enormous smile! I just couldn't wait to share this tonight even though it is not Tuesday!

Why do I love this book?

1. I love the colour green used for the cover and the grass (my photo doesn't do this justice and this older copy is fairly faded)
2. I love the idea of making a story from the cloud shapes - I'm sure we have all done this
3. I love the way the balloon, that has floated away from the children, becomes part of the cloud story
4. I love the simple, direct prose
5. I love the words - spread-eagled, scuttered, strutted, stumped.
6. I love the way the text is repeated at the end - rather like a bookend.
7. I love that this book is just about a small event, a tiny part of the day where two kids enjoy lying on the grass with their dog Ruben watching the clouds and talking about what they can see

"Tom and me were out on Saturday in the sun with Ruben and our red balloon. 
We'd galloped, panting down the hill then dropped spread-eagled on the grass watch the clouds that seemed to hover over us, Tom said, before they drifted past. 
Ruben scuttered off after an imaginary rabbit and there we lay Tom and me and the red balloon floated away."

Clouds is a really old book - first published in 1972. You might be lucky and find it in a well stocked library.

Peggy Blakeley was the author of over 150 books including the music books Apusskidu, Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay which are titles I am sure many Primary school teachers will recognise. She died aged 85 in 2006.  Clouds is the only book, in English at least, that I can find illustrated by Kazuo Niizaka. A colleague in Japan did some more research for me. Kazuo Niizaka (1943-1987) loved kites and he wrote several books about them. Here is his book Tobeshiro Owl from 1980.

I would like to know more about the books by Peggy Blakeley - and why, in the 1970s, so many of her books, published by A and C Black (series Read Together Books), were illustrated by Japanese illustrators. Sorry Momoko and the Pretty bird appears here - it is not by Peggy Blakeley it's by Chihiro Iwasaki.

Illustrator Kenzo Kobayashi

Illustrator Shomei Yoh

Illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki

Here are some more text quotes from Clouds:

"And then came a whale blowing across the great wide sky at noon chasing, quite ferociously, our little red balloon."

"Next an unlikely elephant came with Tom and me up on its back. 

A mangy lion, a fluffy dog, a frightened hare, a tiny mouse - it seemed the sky was full up there.

But the yellow bird was flying high and our red balloon went bob, bob, bobbing by."

"Tom and me were out one Saturday in the sun with Ruben coming home and the only bit left of our lovely red balloon. And we lay spread-eagled on the grass watching the clouds as they went drifting past."