Virginia Lowe

Pigs don’t fly, but dragons and kites do, and possums can jump, which is perhaps just as scary if you’re a little one. These four picture books deal with flight, their authors and illustrators using more or less imaginary elements in the process.

Virginia Lowe has carved an academic career in the area of ‘childist criticism’ based on the responses of very young children (particularly her own) to books. Shortly after their daughter, Rebecca, was born in 1971, the Lowes began to read to her. Virginia recorded the process in a daily journal. Three years later, when their son, Ralph, was born, she recorded his reactions as well, and continued the journal in detail for about eight years. It comprises some 6,000 pages covering almost 2,000 books and the children’s engagement with them, and it formed the basis of her PhD thesis, of which Stories, Pictures and Reality: Two Children Tell, is a reworking.

Imaginative grandfathers and European cityscapes dominate in these books, with all the protagonists having creative ways of seeing, just like their creators. When Suzy, in Grandpa’s Gate, falls down the thirteen steps from her house, what is needed is a gate for the top. So Grandpa welds a special one, with an owl, a moon and stars – ‘all sorts of extraordinary bits of his own’. It’s practical, but interesting at the same time. Then Suzy and her family move away and don’t see Grandpa for years, until, lonely and confused, he comes to live with them. But Suzy has an idea: in the garage is her old gate. Together, she and Grandpa paint, rehang and weld more birds to go with it.