#Booky100Keepers Day 76: The Books of Steve Antony

Sometimes it feels like we've been extremely privileged to witness the rise and rise of a person's kidlit career, reviewing their awesome books then delighting as others discover them and love them as much as we do.

Steve Antony's brilliant "The Queen's Hat" arrived at a time when the nation was feeling a lot of love for our monarch. It almost feels like a different era, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee had been and gone, as had the London 2012 Olympics but when we first took a look at "Hat" back then, we loved the idea of a picture book romp featuring the Queen, and a mad dash to recover her wind-blown hat.

Steve obviously poured a lot of love and a lot of work into this book, filled with a brilliant chase, a ton of awesome little pictorial in-jokes and funny bits. It was a huge hit with us and Steve followed up with a couple of sequels (including a superb christmassy edition - "The Queen's Present") that were also very well received.

But oh, then there was this one...

"Please Mr Panda" came along at a time when we'd started writing the ReadItTorials for the first time, and I'd been moaning on about how kids today were becoming less and less polite. No pleases, no thankyous, not even a polite hello or goodbye if you greeted them.

The whole core of any book that tries to teach kids a moral lesson needs to be subtly done. Too light and the kids will miss the message entirely. Too heavy and it feels like some adult finger-wagging at them.

Steve's genius was to dream up a completely engaging (and hilariously deadpan) character to do the heavy lifting in his story, Mr Panda, a sombre looking chap but also a chap in possession of a delicious tray of donuts. Various creatures come along to try and snaffle them, but only one thinks to try saying "Please!"

Again Steve hit on a formula that worked beautifully for several follow-up books. But never let it be said that this awesome dude is a two-trick pony. Oh no sirree

I swear the guy has some sixth sense when it comes to creating the sort of picture books we've been waiting for. Again this time I'd been moaning about picture books following 'safe' formulas with very little to separate a publisher's annual output in some cases.

"Unplugged" breaks just about every picture book 'mould' there is to break - and it's testament to Steve's talent, and the faith his agent and publisher have in his ability to produce completely engaging and important stories that this book exists at all.

The story of Blip is so different for many reasons. First of all there's never any mention made in the book of Blip's gender. This is hugely important in children's books (though I am sure that I remember reading a lot of blogs that reviewed this and automatically assumed Blip was male). There's also the way the book looks, eschewing the normally heavily over-saturated and colourful picture book format for something that is largely greyscale. We wrote about how it reminded us of an old Playstation game called Vib Ribbon. I remember C's reaction to the book, and the reaction of others who fully understood what Steve was trying to achieve and I'm secretly sad that we don't see more books like this on bookshelves.

We've never actually met Steve but he seems like the sort of person you really want in kidlit - someone who fully understands the huge responsibility placed on their shoulders to produce books that mean something, that enhance children's lives, that educate and amaze - but in all cases, are downright fun to read. He seems like a lovely bloke on Twitter and I hope he continues to produce awesome work like this for many many years to come.

Below are links to some of his other books that we've covered on the blog including the ones mentioned above (I mean how many times has he fetched up in our "Book of the Week" slot?)

Review Links:

ReaditDaddy's Book of the Week - Week Ending 11th April 2014 - "The Queen's Hat" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

ReadItDaddy's Second Book of the Week - Week Ending 9th October 2015 - "The Queen's Handbag" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

ReadItDaddy's Second Picture Book of the Week - Week Ending 25th January 2019: "Amazing" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

"Goodnight Mr Panda" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

ReadItDaddy's First Picture Book of the Week - Week Ending 30th March 2018 - "Unplugged" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

I'll Wait, Mr Panda by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

ReadItDaddy's Second Book of the Week - Week Ending 19th December 2014 - "Please Mr Panda" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

Booky Advent Calendar Book of the Week - Week Ending 9th December 2016 - "The Queen's Present" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

"The Queen's Lift-Off" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

"Green Lizards Vs Red Rectangles - What are we fighting For?" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

Monster in the Hood by Steve Antony (Oxford University Press / Oxford Children's Books)

"When I Grow Up" by Tim Minchin and Steve Antony (Scholastic)