Perfectly formed this is a classic wordless picture book set long ago but which nonetheless sums up the kind of bad day that can happen to anyone at anytime and the similarly timeless loving resolution of it.
In a lovely picture with him squeezed between the bed and the wall Johnny actually gets out of bed on the wrong side…Arriving downstairs crumpled and dirty, his mother gives him a brisk cleaning up which doesn’t improve his mood. He then knocks over the jug, pulls his sister’s hair, gets sent to his room, gets shouted at by his father and runs away…Fittingly but with no unnecessary explanation, all ends well.
Johnny gets out of the wrong side of the bed one morning – a bad start to a very bad day. Johnny spills the milk at breakfast, pulls his sister’s hair, and makes a horrid banging noise with his toys. His mother and father are very cross with him and he is cross with them! The day seems to be going from bad to worse, but, by the end of it, tired and tearful Johnny is a happy boy again.
Edward Ardizzone was born in 1900. His family moved to Ipswich in 1905 and lived there until Ardizzone was fourteen. It was in Ipswich, as he later wrote, that he "...learnt to know and love the little coastal steamers that I have drawn so often in the Tim books."
Ardizzone illustrated more than 170 books and his outstanding work in the field of children's book illustration was recognised when he won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1956. The adventures of Tim are firm favourites with readers, young and old, throughout the world.
He lived in Maida Vale in London for most of his life, but was away for the whole war, working as an official War Artist.
Edward Ardizzone was a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and was appointed CBE in 1971.
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