{"id":392229,"date":"2025-09-02T15:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T15:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/392229\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T15:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T15:39:10","slug":"letter-allan-ahlberg-obituary-childrens-books-7-and-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/392229\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Allan Ahlberg obituary | Children&#8217;s books: 7 and under"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">As the obituary of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2025\/jul\/31\/allan-ahlberg-obituary\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Allan Ahlberg<\/a> observed, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguin.co.uk\/books\/59930\/the-babys-catalogue-by-allan-ahlberg-illus-janet-ahlberg\/9780141343365\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Baby\u2019s Catalogue<\/a>, written by him and illustrated by <a href=\"https:\/\/booksforkeeps.co.uk\/article\/obituary-janet-ahlberg\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">his wife, Janet<\/a>, was based on the fact that babies like to spot other babies. However, this one was far more creative than other books showing babies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Allan told a conference that I went to as a children\u2019s librarian that he and Janet, both bookish, were not best pleased that their toddler Jessica\u2019s favourite book was the Mothercare catalogue. Janet therefore included things that babies would recognise: a teddy, a highchair, a swing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">I am retired now, but in talking to parents about sharing books with very young children, I recommended The Baby\u2019s Catalogue as a very useful start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the obituary of Allan Ahlberg observed, The Baby\u2019s Catalogue, written by him and illustrated by his wife,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-392229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115135457794951468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}