Review of The Witch's Children by Ursula Jones Illustrated by Russell Ayto

This is a book that was recommended to me by my sister-in-law, who is as passionate about great kids' books as I am. In fact, it was one my husband read to my pregnant belly before our son (who will be three in April) was born.

The story is about three witch's children who visit the park and get into trouble by doing magic they aren't skilled enough to undo. The story is inventive, unpredictable, and has a great twist at the end that is quite clever. There is enough repetition for young children to understand the structure of the book, but not so much that it's mind-numbing for parents. It's not scary (the witch is a typical mom who bails her kids out when they get into trouble) and it has a happy ending but if you are very religious and are opposed to the idea of witches this might not be the book for you.

The illlustrations are wonderful - I think Russell Ayto is incredibly talented. One aspect I just love is that the story is set on a windy day (you don't realize how unusual it is to have weather factor in to a children's story until you see an example where it does) and Ayto's drawings have a stylized treatment that exaggerates the wind - the children's hair blows directly to the left, and trees lean 90 degrees from vertical making the strength of the wind palpable. He varies his methods for creating episodic information - sometimes two side-by-side panels contain consequtive events, in other cases a series of small drawings cascade down the page to indicate the chronology. At times the action is set in an environmental context (the park) and at other times the drawings are simply placed on a field of graduated color.

I particularly like the way the book's design incorporates the text with the illustrations - in places words are much larger for emphasis, or slant this way and that as they appear to blow in the wind. Ayto's sense of pattern, color, and design make it an appealing visual experience and could easily inspire a clever interior designer to create a room based on its stripes, polka dots and color combinations.