A truly wonderful picture book, one of my favourites. The story itself is very well done, but I think the real draw are the illustrations, which are marvelous. I spent a summer working in a pub in Cornwall, it must be near 15 years ago now, and I read this book for the first time then, while I was visiting Mousehole. It stayed with me ever since, and I finally got around to getting my own copy. Well worth it.

It's one of those picture books I'd never let an actual child read. Filthy little things, they'd ruin it. I'm all for literacy, but not when my lovely book ends up sticky and jam-smeared because of it.