Brian Wildsmith Oxford reader series

See some pages inside this book here

Read more here

Beginning in the 1980s Brian Wildsmith created eighteen slim 16 page 'readers' for Oxford. The artwork is amazing. How lucky were the children who had these in their library or classroom. Each one ends with a surprise. The series began with The Cat on the Mat. I did have a copy of this one in my former school library but I had not seen other books from this series until I visited the Brian Wildsmith exhibition in Barnsey this year. And then luckily for me the library I visit each week had a few of the titles in their collection. Sadly these are all now out of print but I did find used copies for around AUS$20 each.

Image source: Brian Wildsmith books - click on the images on this webpage to see inside each book.

I took some photos from the books I borrowed this week and also one at the exhibition.

Here is the text from 'If I were you':

I went to the zoo, and I thought ...

If I were an eagle, I would fly to the moon.

If I were a walrus, I would swim to the bottom of the sea.

If I were a monkey, I would climb the highest tree.

If I were an elephant, I would lift a tractor high into the air.

If I were a cheetah, I would win every race.

But if you were me ... you would be free.

This shows you the structure of these stories with a predictable text pattern and then a final twist. Look at all the words a child encountered in this book and they also had a chance to try out the way commas work because each sentence was spread across two pages.

The Trunk is a wordless book and If Only, contains just two words - but there is so much to discover in the illustrations. 

Here is an interview with Brian Wildsmith's children 9Simon, Clare and Rebecca) about his art techniques. 

His work is more suggestive, visually strong, but honouring a child’s natural ability to understand the essence of quite complex paintings in a way that adults often fail to do. He once said, ’I paint what I see with my eyes and feel with my heart.’ From the tiniest of little insects feasting on flowers, to the mightiest of mammals, his art is filled with the joy of all that is best about our world – a world that is rapidly changing but with children that are fundamentally the same as they ever were.