How to use this Page

If like me you grew up (mostly) in the UK in the 70s and 80s and you’re asked to think of a famous witch from the canon of children’s literature, I’m fairly confident the name Meg would be one of the first to trip off your tongue.

Back in 1972 Meg and Mog arrived on the scene (in a flash of lightning, out of a cauldron, the wonderful result of a spell gone not quite according to plan, I like to think), the creation of Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski and they’ve been delighting children ever since. I loved their books when I was little and now my children share my laughter when we read the stories of crazy japes and spells gone wrong which come together to form the Meg and Mog series.

With Halloween not far off the timing couldn’t have been better for the release of the first new Meg and Mog book in four years. Meg Goes to Bed is a worthy addition to the collection. Although the story is perhaps not quite as satisfying as Meg at Sea, Mog’s Missing or Meg’s Car, many features that you would want to find in a quintessential Meg and Mog story are here to delight in.

There is an apparently simple scenario – Meg, Mog and Owl are hungry – but yet disaster still manages to strike. There’s a classically illustrated recipe for a spell, followed by the inevitably unintended results when the magic words are incanted. Meg’s catch phrase (“Oh dear, oh dear“), Mog and Owl’s nigh on obligatory crash landing and the idea that hard work and perseverance rather than the swish of a magic wand will get you what you need all add up to making this a book that my children were thrilled to read and that I was very pleased to add to our collection.

Pieńkowski’s bold, graphic design influenced illustrations, with their bright, sheer palette and tone are dramatic and exciting. In Meg Goes to Bed the articulation of the familiar characters, Meg, Mog and Owl is slightly less smooth than in earlier Meg and Mog books, but then I would not expect characters which have been drawn for almost 40 years to be identical today with their first incarnations. Indeed when I asked Jan about this as part of an interview I held with him (which will be published on Monday) he had this to say: “Change is inevitable… The Great Masters have “an Old Style”, perhaps humble illustrators are allowed to have one too!“.

An additional joy of reading Meg Goes to Bed was that it made a great early reader for M – in fact she has taken great pride in reading it to J. As M said, it’s a “real” book (rather than one written as an early reader), with engaging, familiar illustrations. Seeing M’s happiness at being able to read a brand new story from a s