Some of my earliest memories are of the picture books I was absorbed in as a small child. On my latest visit to my family home I rummaged around in the loft and found a few of these books. It was a bit like being reunited with an old familiar face as I poured over the same pictures that fired my young imagination and then featured in some trippy dreams back then. Being a child of the 70s, alot of the illustrations are in pretty vivid colour schemes and looking at them now, with an adult/ illustrators perspective, I see the quality of drawing wasn’t always that great.

There is an exception though and I wanted to share a few of the gorgeous illustrations with you here. The Bowerbirds isn’t one I remember for it’s story - though it is really charming. I loved the elegant watercolour/ pen and ink images by Margery Gill. A little bit of research reveals she died quite recently at the age of 83 and though successful, maybe didn’t receive the recognition she deserved during her career.

Enjoy my scans - in doing these I’ve broken the yellowing tape of a repair job from years ago. The images following them are from various vintage kids books sites. I may well track down a few copies for myself, purely for the illustrations!