Newspaper Article

As close to baby as a dad can get

Anne Johnstone celebrates World Book Day with children's author Allan Ahlberg

2001

Overview

In many households these books have an iconic significance as powerful as an old teddy. [Allan Ahlberg] is often asked to sign disintegrating copies, held together by little more than Sellotape, jam, and love. He is in Glasgow today to address teachers and parents. It's World Book Day and he is the keynote speaker. (\"They raffled the British Isles and Puffin won Scotland.\") For many dads, snuggling up with a small child and an Ahlberg is probably the closest thing to the joyful intimacy of breastfeeding. The Ahlbergs understood this alchemy perfectly. That's why a book like [Peepo]! works on two levels. The child plays peepo with the baby in the book as he moves through the timeless routine of an infant's day. Meanwhile, the adult can enjoy the detailed recreation of domestic life in wartime Britain, from Oxo tins to Picture Post. Perhaps the true genius of the Ahlberg partnership was in his brevity and her eye for detail. On the first page of Bye Bye Baby, for instance, we meet the baby who lives alone. \"He even changed his own nappy.\" Allan's text doesn't need to embellish this statement because [Janet]'s watercolour articulates both the sadness and the humour implicit in it. In 1998 Allan moved from Leicester to London and a new garden shed, this time in Kew. The new shed came with a new woman, Vanessa Clarke, an editor at Walker Books. They married last year, bringing him two step-daughters, including a lively 10-year-old with a passion for Jackie Wilson. \"Usually when you lose a partner and marry again the first love drifts into the past,\" says Allan, but that hasn't happened with Janet because through their books they remain a couple. \"I love them both. Now I feel simultaneously happy and sad.\"

• Publisher: Gannett Media Corp
• Subject: Ahlberg, Allan