Leonard Leslie Brooke: children’s book illustrator

Explore – well known stories or fairy tales

Discuss – what makes a good children’s story

Discover – how illustrations in a story help to develop ideas and feelings

•Personal history

caption =”The Lion and the Unicorn ©##http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Lion_and_the_Unicorn_1.jpg##Project Gutenberg (Public domain)##

• Subject areas

• Possible topics

• Suggested activities

• Interesting fact

• Literary and artistic links

• Sources

• Further resources

Subject Areas

• English – Exploring the meaning of texts; finding information about character, setting and narrative themes

• Art & Design – The role of illustrations in developing ideas and feelings/ enhancing stories

Possible Topics

• What do you need to make a good children’s story?

• The work of famous illustrators of children’s literature – Leonard Brooke, Beatrix Potter, Mary Shepard, Quentin Blake

• Exploring the history of children’s fairy tales

Suggested Activities

• Writing your own fairy tale – maybe combining the famous characters from different fairy tales

• Illustrating an existing fairy tale or one you have made up

• Creating a short quiz for your classmates to see how much they know about famous fairy tales

Interesting Fact

When Leslie Brooke was in London, a publisher sent him a set of drawings by a then unknown artist and asked for his opinion. After taking a look he gave them back with his immediate approval and told the publisher to go ahead for they would be an undoubted success. The illustrations were for (what became) a very well-known and beloved set of children’s tales – The Tales of Peter Rabbit – and the artist was none other than Beatrix Potter.

Literary & Artistic Links

1892 – Leslie Brooke met J.M.Barrie and began painting portraits, exhibited in RA 1896

1900 – Leslie Brooke illustrated Edward Lear’s Nonsense Songs

Sources

Three little pigs,Project Gutenberg (source see below)

Papers relating to an exhibition at the Hampstead Museum, Burgh House in 1984

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Further Resources

The Horn Book (the Journal of American Children’s libraries), devoted its Spring 1941 issue to tributes to L. Leslie Brooke

A number of works featuring Brookes as illustrator and author may be viewed and downloaded free of charge courtesy of Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3547

Also see the worksheet in this series on Mary Shepard

This page was last updated on November 30th, 2020.