Telling Tales AN ARTICLE UTTERLY ABOUT LAUREN CHILD

The Lonely Doll

Dare Wright’s books captured the imagination of a

generation of American children. Her carefully

posed photograhs of Edith, a felt Lenci Doll dating

from Dare's childhood in the 1920s, and her

companions Mr. Bear and Little Bear still charm a

contemporary eye although accounts of Wright’s

tragic life pique our curiousity too. Of the ten Lonely

Doll books, three are currently in print. A film of Dare

Wright's life, directed by Oscar nominee Julian

Schnabel is scheduled to begin filming later this year.

www.lenci-dolls.net, www.darewright.com

As a little girl,children’s author and illustrator Lauren

Child wore beautiful dresses lovingly made by her

mother. Unfortunately, once she had grown out of them

her mother gave them to a local jumble sale. Luckily,

Lauren spotted them and bought them back. Her

mother then gave them to another jumble sale, some

thing she now utterly regrets.

The author rummages through her drawer of

fabrics and finally digs out the one she has been

searching for. The tiny floral print is one of the few rem

nants from a childhood dress. Scanned into her com

puter a red flower detail is picked out and becomes one

of Lola’s dresses for the hugely popular animated

Charlie and Lola series.

From Clarice Bean to Charlie and Lola, with

numerous titles in between, Lauren Child’s books have

proved phenomenally successful. What is the secret of

her success? It has not come easily. As a teenager she

bounced from one art college course to another. Finally,

events conspired to lead her towards children’s book

publishing. Pausing to consider why her books have

such appeal, Lauren suggests it may be “that I started

from a point of what interested me so that I write in an

unselfconscious way”.

The books have a tactile quality. The naive style of

drawing and the spontaneous collages of photos and

fabrics look as though they might have been pasted

with flour and water. The text works around the illustra

tions, quite the reverse of the norm. It is also suggestive

of the hopscotch logic that is perfectly clear to children

but headache-inducing for adults. Lauren's retelling of

Hans Christian Andersen's The Princess and the Pea

on which she worked with photographer Polly Borland

is her most intricate work to date. Each illustration was

a painstakingly constructed miniature room set

peopled with tiny figures clothed in layers of paper.

What is most striking about her collection of fabrics

is how ordinary it is. The fabulous evening dress and

dinner suit worn by Mrs and Mr Bobton-Trent in Hubert

Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trenthas its origin in a tacky

synthetic circa 1970. But this is where her work is

special. Just as children manage to transform incredible

tat from the dressing-up box and appear as a fairy or

princess, so these fabrics are given a change of scale

and context so that they appear jewel-like throughout

the pages of Lauren’s books. •••Marie O’Mahony