The Story of the Story

of

Alfred and the Pirates

The story of how this book came to be is a story in itself:

In June, 2003 I was invited to show the young winners of the Blue Peter poster competition some ancient treasures in the British Museum galleries when they came to the Museum for the Birthday Celebrations.  That was where I met Emily for the first time.  Emily’s mother Zoe happened to have with her a crumpled brown paper bag on which there were wonderful drawings of zebras and horses by that particular young artist.  Straightaway, I asked the artist herself if she would mind reading a draft of Alfred and the Pirates, and telling me what was wrong with it, or just not interesting.  Before long the manuscript came back with a few comments, but, much more importantly, illustrated by several Emily pictures - done in biro - of Alfred’s adventure, including the bad-tempered parrot that was so rude to him.  From that moment there could only be one possible artist to do the book…
                      Irving Finkel

Thus it came about that, following a happy June day in London, Author and Artist began work together to produce this new children’s book, in which the text and the illustrations are closely interwoven to provide a captivating and imaginative experience.