Kittens and Puppies

We’re having a great sort out – again, but trying this time to be really ruthless, not sentimental but practical and  just simplify our lives by having fewer possessions. Yes, I know I’ve mentioned this before when we have tried to be really ruthless, not sentimental and we have rationalised to an extent… but this time it’s serious.

We’re at a stage where things are now in odd places as decisions are made and reorganisation is taking place, and on my desk here are several books waiting for their fate to be decided. One of them need not fear, I won’t be getting rid of ‘My Book of Kittens and Puppies‘ by Ivy L. Wallace illustrated by Racey Helps (yes, that’s his name) I thought it was my childhood book, but inside the cover, where it says ‘This book belongs to‘ is written Ann Elsden, my sister – except her name is spelt wrongly, Ann not Anne.

The book was published in 1951, and the stories are what you would imagine. The first is The Three Little Kittens. the short verse about the loss of the kittens’ mittens, and subsequent loss of pie because they have been naughty. They live in a house with Mother, wear clothes, of course, and walk on two legs. It’s rather charming, except their is a doll on the floor which no book would ever have now, very politically incorrect. There are a couple more verses, the kittens eat their pie, wearing the mittens which have been found, then have to wash them and hang them on the line. The rest of the poems and stories are a mixture of nursery rhymes and little adventures of cats and dogs, all dressed up in various outfits, and they are quite charming, in their way and i guess if a little child was sitting with its parents or grandparents, reading them together and looking at and talking about the illustrations, the fact that the stories are over seventy years old wouldn’t matter!. My edition, however is just about falling to pieces, and unless I had Chris Shaw from The Repair Shop attend to it I’d just have a series of pages in my hands.

Ivy Wallace who wrote the simple story was a most interesting person. “Ivy Lilian Wallace who was born in 1915 was a British author/illustrator, artist and actress, best known for writing and illustrating the best-selling Pookie series and The Animal Shelf series of children’s books”. From childhood she was interested in nature, and wrote stories and illustrated them, but she was a woman of many, many talents! After leaving school she became an actress, and when the war stated (World War II) she worked for the British film industry to make films for the government, before joining the police. Her creative side meant that when she submitted her ‘Pookie’ stories to a publisher, after a disappointingly long wait, they were taken up by William Hope Collins. It seems very romantic, but she and William married and she founded her own publishing company. Sadly her husband died unexpectedly in 1967. Encouraged by her daughters, she eventually started publishing again, and after a long and happy life, she died peacefully in her sleep in 2006.