Saturday, December 19, 2009

Best books: Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake, the artist and author best known for his illustrations of Roald Dahl’s children’s books, recently collaborated with author David Walliams on The Boy in the Dress, a children’s novel.

For The Week magazine, Blake named his six best books.

One title on the list:
Pictures From Italy by Charles Dickens

This is a slight book compared with such great works as Bleak House and Little Dorrit, but Dickens was a brilliant journalist and letter writer, and this is a fluent and engaging account of the year he and his family spent in Italy in 1844. He describes his mansion in Genoa as “like a pink jail.”
Read about another book on Blake's list.

--Marshal Zeringue