About

About Kate Coldrick’s Book Corner

When my children were little, our shared reading time was one of the most precious parts of the day. Each of them had their own favourite books that they would return to again and again — and many of those stories have stayed with us ever since.

We especially loved tracking down copies of old, out-of-print picture books. Our Saturday mornings often involved a wander through local charity shops, searching the shelves for hidden treasures to add to our growing collection. Sometimes we’d find a book we already knew in a different edition — and marvel at how the same story could be transformed by a new illustrator.

One of our favourites was Ray Bradbury’s Switch on the Night: in Madeleine Gekiere’s original illustrations it’s a gentle, timeless exploration of a child’s fear of darkness; in Leo and Diane Dillon’s version, it becomes an immersive dreamworld full of Escher-like wonder. That ability of art to reshape a story fascinated all of us — and still does.

Some authors became firm family favourites. Jack Kent’s There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon made everyone smile, which is why the dragon now appears in this blog’s header and site icon. Others were particular to one child, such as my son’s enduring love of Esphyr Slobodkina’s Caps for Sale — a book he still adores to this day.

This blog is a way of returning to those well-worn pages and rediscovering the stories that made readers of us all. Each post revisits one book from our collection, sharing a few photos, memories of reading it together, and what makes it special now.

To learn more about the person behind the blog, visit About Kate Coldrick