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John Burningham’s book ‘Seasons’ is one of his most admired books first published in 1969 by Jonathan Cape. It was published in two formats, one with a fold-out scene. Here the writer and Sunday Times children’s book reviewer, Nicolette Jones explores  the illustrations for ’spring’ from John’s Seasons. 

John Burningham’s illustrations of Spring for Seasons (1969) demonstrate, quite aside from their beauty and skill, his mischievous way of coming at things from an unexpected angle. Just as his transport poster about country walks showed someone lying in a hammock, his seasonal pictures depict scenes that increasingly deviate from what is conjured by the few words of text.

His first spring image is a fresh and sunny landscape with blue sky and daffodils and a ploughed field – elements you might have anticipated. By the last Spring page illustrating ‘and flowers’, we see two children, a doll and a dog squished behind the jockey on a horse that gallops (legs arranged with the inaccuracy of an 18th-century painting) through a wildflower meadow. Burningham has added something much more fun, exciting and unpredictable than the pretty (and delightful) bank of flowers alone.

In the two spreads between the first and last images, birds swoop down to a nest in an image that takes us up high with them above a village, pigs root around a tree (an unusual spring motif, though seasonally appropriate) and we see lambs and ducks. None of these is drawn according to conventional, reductive nursery cliches: they are in a style between observation and caricature, distinctively Burningham’s, convincing but light-hearted. And there are small figures giving the images depth, and extra dramas: a shepherd has lost his sheep to a rocky outcrop and waves his arms to summon them back; a fisherman sits in a distant boat on the surface of the water as Burningham takes us below it in the company a dabbling duck; just as in the final image more horses can be seen on the horizon. He always rewards attention with bonuses.

And in the showstopping Spring gatefold, a luxuriance of green foliage, the bonus is a cycling scene with two bicycles and a dog, also rich in both foreground and background. All these are pictures you would like to run (or ride, or cycle or row) into, and you could keep going for a good long time.

Seasons was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1969. It is currently out of print, but we hope it will be revived sometime soon

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