Judith Kerr by Joanna Carey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It’s difficult for me to tell you how perfect this is so instead, I’ll tell you about how I had to stop halfway through reading to have a moment over how perfect it was. I have lusted over the Illustrators series from Thames and Hudson for a long while, making a quiet little list of the ones I wanted to get (all of them) and slowly started to pick them up when funds allowed. Judith Kerr was my first and I adored it, endlessly, emotionally, for Joanna Carey’s writing about her is so soft and loving and respectful and the images are perfect, and honestly, it’s just lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely. (now I have to go and get all the others).
Okay, let’s try and be a bit more coherent here. (IT’S LOVELY). Let’s tell you about the fact that technically it’s more of an adult non-fiction biographical kind of coffee table hybrid of a book which interleaves a long and lusciously written profile of Kerr with richly reproduced images of her work. her earliest work is present due to the quick thinking of her mother, packing for their escape from Germany, and seeing these pieces laid out on the page is intensely moving. I particularly enjoyed seeing some of her college work and tracing the refinement of her style and voice – already fiercely present in her earliest artwork.
Judith Kerr was one of the most present and articulate creatives I have ever witnessed in the world of children’s literature and things like this are such a fitting tribute to the gift that was her work. I love Judith Kerr, I loved this, I loved it.
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Daisy May Johnson 
In view of our present myopic government’s attitude to refugees, I wonder how many of the cabinet know (or indeed care) that Judith Kerr and Eva Ibbotson, to name just two, were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany? Would Priti Patel have had them fruit-picking or told them to seek asylum at the first European nation they came too? I’ll stop before I get incandescent with rage and just say this book sounds as lovely as you make it out to be!
Quite!!