It is perhaps surprising that the literary success of 2019 was Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. The Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Year is, after all, a picturebook.
Although designed for a more mature audience than pre-school children, it is yet another sign of the enduring power of the picturebook to deal with profound themes and speak in the language of feeling and emotion so often absent from the rest of our busy lives.
It is also a confirmation of what has long been neglected in literary circles: that the picturebook is the natural genre for readers (of all ages) to reflect on their own and others’ emotional experience.
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