Serendipity

Sometimes serendipity is a quiet coincidence, followed by another coincidence.  Sometimes it snowballs.

I recently read I Know My Name by C.J. Cooke in which four-year-old Max wears Gruffalo pajamas and insists that his father read him The Gruffalo each night.  (I Know My Name is a psychological mystery, not a children's book.)  

I am always intrigued with the titles and illustrations of children's books that I see on various blogs and on book review sites.  Gruffalo sounded familiar, but I had no picture of a Gruffalo in mind, I just liked the kid in his favorite pajamas who loved the book.  So I looked up The Gruffalo, written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler.

A day or so later, I was looking at postage stamps that intrigued me (I love mail art and whimsical stamps).  I saw the following bird stamp on Pinterest, which led me to this article.    Axel Scheffler had created the delightful images for The Royal Mail's 2012 Christmas Stamps!

Huh?  Axek Scheffler illustrated Julia Donaldson's The Gruffalo!  The stamps I'd found were serendipitously connected to a small detail in a recent novel.  

Then a couple of days later, I was looking at the article again and checked Axel Scheffler's website and discovered he had illustrated a cover for T.S. Eliot's Ole Possum's Book of Practical Cats, one of my favorite books of all time.

My copy is the one illustrated by Edward Gorey, but I love Scheffler's version as well.  So...I looked at other Scheffler books and found that I had a copy of Room on the Broom, also written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Scheffler.  I bought a copy of Room on the Broom for Bryce Eleanor about five or six years ago.  I had it out for Halloween as inspiration for October mail art, but didn't use it.  Maybe I will next year, after finding all these serendipitous connections.

And since I love letters, postage stamps, and mail art, I think I want to read about Postman Bear, too!   

Without ever paying attention to the name of the illustrator, 

I have consistently been attracted to Alex Scheffler's art.