The Ordinary Life of Jacominus Gainsborough

LoveReading4Kids Says

June 2025 Book of the Month

This beautiful book will appeal to readers whatever their age and some of its double pages, each a unique homage to a great work of art, are so sumptuous that you will want them on your walls.

Rébecca Dautremer’s artwork is matched in scope and splendour by her ambition, for she sets out to do nothing less than examine a life, from birth right through to death, though by playfully giving her characters animal heads she ensures its appeal even to those too young for the concept.

And so we meet Jacominus Gainsborough, first as a teeny-tiny person (with rabbit head) in a pram, as his parents and grandmother decide his name, we consider that had he been born in a different time, or to different parents, he would have been someone else, and we follow him through his life. He makes friends, falls in love, has some sad, difficult times but generally understands what brings happiness, and achieves it. The final pages show him at the very end of it all, a beautiful image, still and restful after the expansive scenes that have come before, while the text counts up the sum of his life – in picnics, favourite songs, sudden realisations and more, including - the biggest of them all - memories.

It’s a book unlike anything else, with scenes and images to pore over, and ideas and a philosophy to set minds reeling. Extraordinary!

Andrea Reece

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