Once a month, my lovely local Library has a Book Chat hour, where each of the Librarians tell you about the books they’ve been reading that month and also show you which new books have arrived in the Library. One of the Librarians had been reading Neil Curtis’ The Memory Book, and I was lucky enough to be the first person to grab it from her!
The book is a personal record of the author’s first seven years of his life. It is extremely personal as the book is composed of a series of drawings that he drew for himself as a means to comfort himself when his mother died. Throughout the book, the author draws himself as a little pillowcase character, because “everything in London seems to be damp, not quite dry… some of the other reasons are my business and I won’t tell.”
The snippets read like small poems, some funny, some sad and some just quirky. The illustrations are beautiful throughout. I’ll share some with you now –
Some funny...
The coatpegs had pictures on them.
I wanted the ship or aeroplane, but I got the jam tart…
I was very disappointed.
Some sad...
My father didn’t like me much.
He was bigger than me.
Some quirky...
I had a favourite comic…
One of the character would eat pies with whole cow in them.
It sounded like a luxury to me.
All beautiful.
Summer.
Sailing toy yachts in the park lake.
Sweet dreams.
Reading in the Bath 