Abstract

Everyone’s a critic. While I found Quentin Blake’s pen-and-ink and monochrome wash illustration of Willy Wonka charming—a blend of manic whimsy and wild-eyed threat which is just right for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)—a fellow gallery-goer at the exhibition ‘Picture This: Children’s Illustrated Classics’, currently on show in the Folio Society Gallery at the British Library, loudly pronounced it ‘something you’d find in the New Yorker magazine, not a children’s book’. It is a remark that reflects the proprietorial feelings which children’s literature often induces (not to mention the sense that even if not everyone could write or illustrate a children’s book, then anyone can assess the merits of one).