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mat_tobin's review
4.0
Keeping was born south of the Thames near Lambeth Walk and I can't help thinking that his Cockney childhood is recreated here in Adam and Paradise Island. The picture book, with more narrative writing than usual, tells of a place which the locals refer to as 'Paradise Island'.
Very few people visit or live there now, save for the children from the local estate who use it to play around and a few elderly folk who remember its richer days. So when the council decide to knock it all down, including shops and warehouses, in order to build a motorway, Adam and his friends decide that it is up to them to ensure something of the past is preserved.
I cannot overstate how beautiful Keepings' work is here. Staggering really with illustrations that have an intensity and audaciousness that no one in children's literature has seen replicated (and probably wouldn't be able to now in the UK). There is more Dickens in these illustrations than 1980s London but then perhaps Keeping is telling in this choice...
Very few people visit or live there now, save for the children from the local estate who use it to play around and a few elderly folk who remember its richer days. So when the council decide to knock it all down, including shops and warehouses, in order to build a motorway, Adam and his friends decide that it is up to them to ensure something of the past is preserved.
I cannot overstate how beautiful Keepings' work is here. Staggering really with illustrations that have an intensity and audaciousness that no one in children's literature has seen replicated (and probably wouldn't be able to now in the UK). There is more Dickens in these illustrations than 1980s London but then perhaps Keeping is telling in this choice...
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