Remembering children's author Allan Ahlberg

Allan Ahlberg was a well-known and often-read British children's author who worked closely with his wife, award-winning illustrator Janet Ahlberg. After Janet Ahlberg died in 1994 Ahlberg continued writing and worked with a variety of illustrators including Fritz Wegner, Katherine McEwen, and his daughter Jessica Ahlberg.

To remember Ahlberg, we've looked through his many books in our library collection and picked out some of our favourites.

When choosing only two of Ahlberg's picture books for younger tamariki to highlight, it is hard to go past Each peach pear plum and Peepo!, both of which are expertly illustrated by Janet Ahlberg.

Each peach pear plum
I spy Tom Thumb

Each peach pear plum is a rhyming journey through a fairytale landscape. The story starts with the two lines above, and on each page you're challenged to also spy the named character. Where is Tom Thumb? Where will you find Cinderella? And what has happened to Baby Bunting?

Here's a little baby
One, two three
Stands in his cot
What does he see?

Peepo! shows us a family through the eyes of the baby. From the baby's perspective we Peepo! through the house and watch all the other members of the family as they work and play. The holes cut in each page let us peep through to the illustrations ahead and guess what we're about to find there.

The jolly postman, or, Other people's letters and The jolly Christmas postman both tell the same simple story of a postman going around delivering the mail. But it's the who and the what of his deliveries that make these books something to spend a lot of time with!

Each delivery is to a different well-known fairytale or nursery rhyme character, and each of their letters is included in the book and can be taken out of their envelopes and read again and again. There's the latest Hobgoblin Supplies catalogue for the Witch, a postcard for the Giant, and a birthday card for Goldilocks. The letters in The jolly Christmas postman have, of course, much more of a Christmassy bent to them.

Janet Ahlberg's illustrations of the pages of the books and in particular of the letters and other deliveries themselves are a delight, and there are so many details to explore.

The last of the items by Allan Ahlberg from our libraries that we're highlighting can be found in our Children's Fiction collection. This series of four about a very normal family shows Ahlberg's amazing understanding of both humour and storytelling as each book weaves together what seem like unconnected tales into one very funny story.

• In The man who wore all his clothes Mr Gaskitt puts on all his clothes. He leaves the house wearing every single garment he owns, which somehow ends up thwarting a crime!
• In The woman who won things Mrs Gaskitt just keeps winning things, Horace the cat has a friend over, and Gus and Gloria Gaskitt realise that their new teacher seems just a little too nice.
• In The cat who got carried away there's more than one mystery to solve! Horace has been petnapped, but also, why won't Mrs Gaskitt get out of bed?
• In The children who smelled a rat Gus and Gloria notice that something strange is going on with their teacher, while Mr Gaskitt loses the newest family member.

The illustrations in all four books help tell each story and are fantastic to spend some time looking through to find all the little details.

The last of our very-loved titles by Allan Ahlberg are two that we no longer have in our collection here at Wellington City Libraries, though they can be found in the collection at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University who have recently announced a new Community Borrower card.

The better Brown stories is, like the Gaskitt stories, a book about a very normal family. Too normal, in fact.

The Browns decide that they are dissatisfied with how boring their lives are, so tramp down to talk to the local Writer about making some changes in their lives. Which he does, which leads to some unforeseen (as well as some that were probably foreseen) circumstances, Mysterious Men, and time-jumps.

We'd recommend this book for readers a little older than those who've enjoyed the Gaskitt stories, as well as for adults who enjoy some meta-fiction!

The improbable cat is not a book for the faint-hearted! In this small book Ahlberg tells a haunting paranormal story that all starts with a harmless (or seemingly harmless) kitten turning up in the garden.

We would recommend this story for slightly older readers again. There's nothing violent or gory, but this story certainly is very creepy and will stick in the minds of young and old readers alike.