Hannah loves gorillas, but she’s never seen a real one. Her father’s always much too busy to take her to the zoo – or for anything else, come to that. For her birthday, Hannah asks her father for a gorilla, but is disappointed when the gorilla she gets is just a toy one. But then something extraordinary happens: the toy turns into a real gorilla, who puts on her father’s hat and coat, and whisks her off on a magical trip to the zoo! A touching and highly imaginative tale of a lonely girl whose dreams finally come true.

Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal.

“Joyous and moving… A tour de force.” The Times

Product Details

Format

Paperback

ISBN

9781406352337

Publisher

Walker Books Ltd

Date published

October 3rd, 2013

Accelerated Reader

AR book level: 2.6; Lower years; 0.5 points

Condition

New

Author/Illustrator

Anthony Browne

Anthony grew up in a village called Hipperholme, in Yorkshire. He loved art and would spend hours drawing with his beloved father. He says of his father, “He was an unusual man – outwardly strong and confident, but also shy and sensitive – a bit like the gorillas I love to illustrate now. As well as drawing, he encouraged me to play a lot of sports, such as rugby and soccer and cricket. I was small for my age and I used to go to a fairly tough school – if I hadn’t been good at sports, I would probably have been bullied.”

After he left school, Anthony studied graphic design and then went on to paint the insides of people’s bodies for medical textbooks. He found this fascinating, but after three years found that the work was becoming repetitive (“if you’ve seen one stomach operation, you’ve seen ‘em all!”) and instead began designing greetings cards. This in turn led him to illustrating children’s books – his book Gorilla began life as a picture on a birthday card. Anthony lives in Kent and has two grown-up children.

Gorillas feature in many of Anthony’s books. He says, “I am fascinated by them and the contrast they represent – their huge strength and gentleness. They’re thought of as being very fierce creatures and they’re not.” Anthony’s illustrations also reveal his love of the Surrealist painters, whose pictures often depict strange, dreamlike scenes (look out for all the disguised bananas hidden in Anthony’s books!). When Anthony first has an idea for a picture book, he says, “it’s a strange combination of story and images. Deciding what will be illustrated on the pages of a book is like deciding on the scenes of a film.” Anthony has won many prizes for his work, including the Kate Greenaway Medal (twice) and the Kurt Maschler Award (three times). In 2000, he received the highest international honour for illustration, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, for his services to children’s literature – the first British illustrator to win the prize since 1956.

Anthony was also Children’s Laureate from 2009-2011.