Pretty Things

• Masquerade by Kit Williams
  Cape, 32 pp, £3.50, September 1980, ISBN 0 224 01617 2
• Beauty and the Beast by Rosemary Harris and Errol Le Cain
  Faber, 32 pp, £3.50, October 1980, ISBN 0 571 11374 5
• Mazel and Shlimazel by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Margot Zemach
  Cape, 42 pp, £3.95, November 1980, ISBN 0 224 01758 6
• La Corona by Russell Hoban and Nicola Bayley
  Cape, 32 pp, £3.50, September 1980, ISBN 0 224 01397 1
• Cats’Eyes by Anthony Taber
  Gollancz, 80 pp, £4.50, September 1980, ISBN 0 575 02664 2
• Comic and Curious Cats by Angela Carter and Martin Leman
  Gollancz, 32 pp, £3.50, April 1980, ISBN 0 575 02592 1
• The Wild Washerwomen by John Yeoman and Quentin Blake
  Hamish Hamilton, 32 pp, £3.75, October 1980, ISBN 0 241 89928 1

The literature of pre-literacy reaches its audience by way of adults – parents, teachers, librarians and so on. The best reason for learning to read is to escape from what they prescribe or tolerate. Being neither buyers nor readers, the ultimate audience for picture books is doubly disadvantaged when it comes to influencing what is provided for them. Yet it has on the whole been well served by the teachers and librarians who, in Britain and the USA at least, are still major buyers of hard-cover picture books. The mass markets of cheap annuals and paperbacks are another matter – although the huge increase in the number of titles in soft covers, many of which have already had a long life as library books, heartens anyone who cares about the health of the picture-book form.