A Year in the Seven Stories Archive

All this week, Seven Stories is celebrating our amazing archive as part of the campaign run by The National Archives - 'Explore Your Archive'. Each day will see a new theme and hashtag encouraging archives to open up online, and everyone should look forward to finding out new and exciting gems that don't often get shown off!

Today's theme is celebrating what archives have achieved in the past year. We have had a fantastic time over the past 12 months, so we are delighted to share this with you all.

We have been:

• Hosting 27 researchers from all around the world for nearly 150 sessions
• Taking receipt of 25 donations and purchases of new archive and books
• Receiving 14 loans in from museums, authors and illustrators
• Organising 2 loans out of Collection material, to Berwick and Hartlepool
• Touring 7 major exhibitions of Collection and loaned material to Bradford, London (twice!), Belfast, Kilmarnock, Canterbury and Plymouth. These were seen by nearly 400'000 visitors
• Blogging more than 30 posts on everything from animals to archives
• AND...

November 2014 - Seven Stories was awarded £341,500 by the Heritage Lottery Fund's Collecting Cultures programme. This enables the acquisition and transport of new material, broadening and deepening the overall Collection, and also supports cataloguing and making this material accessible to the public. Find out more here. 

          ©Damien Wootten for Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books. 
November 2014 - Donation of the Clive King Collection. It includes manuscripts of published and unpublished works, letters from publishers and agents, selection of fan mail, copies of published books, scripts of films and plays, draft electronic typescripts stored on floppy disks. Photograph taken by Damien Wootten for Seven Stories. 

December 2014 - Awards won by our volunteers and staff in the North East Museum Volunteers Awards 2014. Ann Bayliss [left] won for ‘Contribution to Collection Care Award’, and Paula Wride [right] was Highly Commended in the ‘Contribution to Supporting Volunteers’ category. These two have been working and volunteering for Seven Stories for many many years, and it was wonderful to see them celebrated.

January 2015 - Donation of the David Fickling Collection. This comprises material relating to the career of David Fickling and the establishment and operations of David Fickling Books. It includes edited manuscripts by many of the authors David has worked with as well as correspondence.

           ©Damien Wootten for Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books. 
February 2015 - Donation of the Beverley Naidoo Collection. The archive includes material relating to her published novels, short stories and anthologies, draft material and correspondence, as well as her non fiction titles and research into equality, diversity and multiculturalism in children's literature.  The collection also includes educational resources, fan mail and responses to Beverley's work. Photograph taken by Damien Wootten for Seven Stories. 

February 2015 - Arrival of the Paul Stickland Collection. A fantastic new collection of artwork for Paul's well known book Dinosaur Roar, arrived at Seven Stories in February. We are delighted to have this artwork in the Collection, and it complemented Paul's fantastic residency in the Seven Stories visitor centre in Summer 2014. Paul built this fantastic dinosaur head to be used in the visitor centre, and it was certainly well loved! The photo shown here is from Paul's website, have a look at what he is up to by clicking here.

February 2015 - Donation of Bernard Ashley Collection. Papers relating to Ashley's career as a writer for children, including manuscripts, correspondence and other papers. This is an accrual to our existing Ashley holdings, he also donated the annotated typescript for The Trouble with Donovan Croft in 2005.

          ©Damien Wootten for Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books. 
February 2015 - As part of the Heritage Lottery Funding for Collecting Cultures, a new post was created. This is Danielle McAloon, our Collections and Exhibitions Assistant. She works extensively on the archive and book collections, and her name will probably be familiar to habitual blog readers!

                      ©Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books. 
April 2015 - Donation of the Elisabeth Beresford Collection. Affectionately known in the office as being divided between 'Wombles' and 'Not Wombles' (our favourite archival category!). This substantial collection includes extensive material relating to Beresford's best-known creation 'The Wombles', including manuscripts, merchandise, correspondence relating to publications and adaptations, books, and various ephemera. The collection also includes material relating to Beresford's numerous other titles for children, her titles for adults, and her early career.

                     ©Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books. 
April 2015 - Donation of the Michael Morpurgo Collection. Several months before donation of the material was made public, our Collections and Exhibtions Director, Archivist, Marketing Assistant and Chief Executive made the long journey down to Devon to pick up the archive. The photo shows Morpurgo signing the paperwork to hand over his papers.

April 2015 - Purchase of Barbara Firth Collection. This wonderful acquisition consists of original published artwork comprising a complete suite of cover and internal illustrations for the award winning Can't You Sleep Little Bear, plus front and back cover illustrations for the paperback version and one single sheet of original lettering (by Liz Wood of Walker Books). There is also preliminary work retained by Barbara Firth, including pencil drawings and sketches, a copy of the manuscript, photos and postcards of bears and supplementary archive material from Walker Books.

May - June 2015 - Some very lucky year 8 students from Shotten Hall in Durham worked on our new Beverley Naidoo archive, creating a new drama based on her book Journey to Jo'burg, and even got to present the play to the author herself!

April - June 2015 - For many years, the Collections office has hosted a placement student from the Heritage, Museums and Galleries Studies course at Newcastle University. This year we had the very wonderful Jennifer Patterson working with us for two months. She worked incredibly hard on all the many tasks we gave her in the store, and even got stuck in with exhibition de installation and installation over at the visitor centre. We were very sad to see her leave! 

June 2015 - One of our biggest achievements this year was installing three new exhibitions in to the newly refurbished visitor centre. Three new exhibitions opened at once, which involved a LOT of behind the scenes work from all the Collections and Exhibitions team - cataloguing, documenting, curating, not to mention the mounting and framing of around 250 works! While the visitor centre was closed, we also were happy to have a few members of staff that usually work there spending time getting to know more about the collection, and helping develop the new exhibitions. 

                       ©Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books. 
August 2015 - Seven Stories turns 10! During August we celebrated being open to the public for 10 years. Our newly refurbished visitor centre was a brilliant way to celebrate!

June 2015 - To coincide with the newly launch Festival of Illustration in Hartlepool, we loaned several illustrations to Hartlepool Art Gallery to join their display. As part of the festival, one of our outreach facilitators, Lynn Telford, worked with 730 participants over 10 days on an associated learning project. Well done Lynn! This photo shows some of the children's drawings inspired by our Polly Dunbar artwork.

August - September 2015 - We hosted another student, the very wonderful Paula Pintos [third from left], who joined us from the University of Leon, Spain, on an Erasmus placement for 2 months. She worked extensively on both our book and archive collections, including a lot of work on the children's literature reference books, as well as our extensive David Wood archive. Paula is another face that will be greatly missed! Click here to read Paula's post on David Wood.

September 2015 - This months saw another new face in our office, Jessica Sage, who has started work as the first EVER literature Knowledge Transfer Partnership in the 40 years the programme has been running. Working hard on our Michael Morpurgo archive at the moment, Jess will be with us for 15 months.

September 2015 - The first book to be written on the Seven Stories Collection arrived in advance copy. Here is the author, Sarah Lawrance (Collections and Exhibitions Director) holding it, possibly just a bit nervous to check the final print! Sarah worked on this book for a long time, pulling together the stories behind many of the collections of illustrations in the archive. Together with her editor, the superb Deirdre McDermott of Walker Books, and help from the team here, it was released to the public in October 2015, and is available to purchase on the Seven Stories website!

September 2015 - Seven Stories and Newcastle University welcomed Karen Sands-O’Connor  as Leverhulme Visiting Fellow for 2015/2016. Karen is Professor of English at Buffalo State College, New York, and specialises in children's literature, twentieth-century British literature, literature about and from the Caribbean, and literary criticism. She is working on a major research project on publishing for a Black British child audience, working extensively with the Seven Stories Collection, and will be giving a series of lectures focusing on this topic.

            ©Damien Wootten for Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books. 
October 2015 - We announced the donation of the Michael Morpurgo Collection in a special event held at Seven Stories visitor centre, just after the AGM. Michael and his wife Clare Morpurgo spoke in conversation with Sarah Lawrance to an enthusiastic and delighted audience. The archive contains manuscripts, typescripts and other papers covering the entire literary career of Morpurgo to date, and will be on public display from July 2016 at Seven Stories, before going on a national tour. Photograph taken by Damien Wootten for Seven Stories. 

Phew! What a busy 12 months! 

To find out more about all the other awesome archives that are being explored this week, search for the following hashtags all over social media:

#explorearchives
#archiveselfie
#archiveslive
#yearinarchives
#archivesrock
#archiveanimals

And of course, don't forget to follow Seven Stories on Twitter and Instagram using the handle @7stories, or on Facebook by searching for 'Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books'.


Seven Stories was able to support the acquisition of the Barbara Firth, Clive King, Paul Stickland, Beverley Naidoo, Michael Morpurgo, Elisabeth Beresford and David Fickling archives through support from a Heritage Lottery Fund ‘Collecting Cultures’ grant. This has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature. For more information on our HLF Collecting Cultures project see: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/news/latestnews/hlf.

14 things you need to know about Seven Stories' Collection

This week is Explore Your Archive Week and archives across the UK will be taking part to #explorearchives and talk about the different collections we all hold.

1. We're a museum and an archive

We collect all sorts of material relating to children's books. Our collection includes drafts, correspondence, illustrations, dummy books and everything that goes into making a children's book. We also have objects - the odd cuddly toy, typewriter and model boat.  We have shell wombles too(!)

2. Seven Stories Collection is made up of over 140 archive collections. 

photograph by Damien Wooton

We started collecting in the mid-1990s and since then our Collection has grown at a phenomenal rate. We now hold over 1800 boxes of archives (housed across 300 metres of shelving). Last year we were awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures grant to expand our Collection further.

3. We hold original material by over 250 artists and authors.  

That’s roughly 135 authors, 123 illustrators, 5 critics, 4 editors and 2 playwrights. As we continue to acquire and catalogue new collections these numbers continue to grow. Have a look at the list of people represented in our collections (the list is constantly growing).

4. Our archive features work by many significant and household names 
Familiar names in our Collection include Enid Blyton, Philip Pullman, Robert Westall, Judith Kerr, Edward Ardizzone and Kaye Webb.

5. Our newest collection is Michael Morpurgo's

Last month we announced the arrival of Michael Morpurgo's collection.  Earlier this year, our Collections Director, Sarah, and Archivist, Kris, went on a trip to Michael's house in Devon to collect boxes and boxes of his work. 

6. Our first major acquisition arrived in 1997

Kaye Webb's collection consists of 55 archive boxes and 11 oversize boxes.  This collection is very well used and items have been used in many of our exhibitions.  Kaye Webb is a hugely important figure in British children's literature; in 1961 Webb became editor of Puffin Books and in 1967 she created the Puffin Club.

7. Our library is HUGE

photograph by Damien Wooton

Another way in which we can help to tell the story of Children’s books is through our incredible library. We hold around 35,000 books and as our archive collection grows so does the book collection.  We have early, rare, signed and first edition children's books.  We even have books annotated by the authors. 

8. We're interested in the whole process

From the very first notes to the fan mail we like to document the entire process of the creation of children's books.

9. We're the home of British children's literature

There are quite a few institutions around the world that collect children's literature archives but our collection is the most substantial archive of 20th Century British children's literature anywhere.

10. Our Collection is unique

We are the only institution in the world with a collecting policy dedicated to modern and contemporary British children's literature.

11. The first book about our Collections was published this year

Written by our Collection Director, Sarah Lawrence, Drawn from the Archive was published earlier this year. The book gives a behind-the-scenes look at sketches, storyboards, drafts and redrafts from some of the illustrators represented in our collections including Edward Ardizzone, Judith Kerr, Nick Sharratt and Polly Dunbar. 

12.  We don't like our collections to collect dust

We like to use them. Our expert team includes curators, librarian, archivist, researchers and touring coordinator.  We use the Seven Stories collection to create many of our exhibitions, to tour them, to provide research access, to blog, and to work with our other departments to create fantastic learning programmes.

13. We keep a Visitor's book

We welcome many authors and illustrators to our Collections so we keep a very interesting Visitor's book.  Our latest visitor was Jim Kay!

14.  We're taking over this week's social media

Join us on Twitter, and Instagram using the handle @7stories and on Facebook by searching for 'Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books' to #explorearchives with us. 

David Fickling Collection continued

You may have read our recent blog posts by our volunteer, Grace, about foraging for archival treasure in the David Fickling Collection.  I thought it would be a nice idea to continue the story.   

Stuck to the wall above my desk is a postcard of David Fickling. I have no idea where it came from but it was there when I arrived at Seven Stories in February.  It shows David Fickling pointing at us readers - ‘Readers: your DFB needs you’. I think this is definite incentive to keep on cataloging: the DFB collection needs me, and our volunteers too. 

David Fickling is a big name in Children’s literature, he is an editor and his name has lent itself as an imprint for both Scholastic and Random House. But, in 2014 David Fickling Books became an independent publishing house.  David seems to be a magnet for talent, he and his team have an eye for spotting amazing books and authors. 

Many of our collections at Seven Stories are from authors and illustrators which is fantastic but this collection shows another side to the story.  It helps to complete the picture, offering us a different insight into how those pencil scribbles, research materials and early drafts develop into neat more complete stories, and how an editor contributes to the creation of the final book that will fill the shelves of bookshops, homes and libraries. David Fickling’s collection represents a large number of author’s work including proof and draft manuscripts, often with editor’s comments.  It’s a goldmine of information and presents a great cross section of the industry in representing approximately 75 different writers.  As the collection unfolds we’re hoping to find cross over material with some of our other collections. However, we still have a lot of work to do in managing all of this information. I haven't even opened the boxes of correspondence that Grace discussed in her last post.

There are currently forty two archive boxes in the David Fickling Collection and as I work through each box the number is steadily increasing.  It is vast, and one of our largest collections at Seven Stories. The collection arrived earlier in the year and since then has undergone serval stages of archival processing by two of our wonderful volunteers.  

Firstly, Grace listed the materials and created a spreadsheet of content so that Kris (our Archivist) and I (the Collections and Exhibitions Assistant) had a better idea of what we had.  Listing a collection as it arrives makes it easier not only to locate material, but to see patterns of how materials are organised, what themes occur and what types of documents make up the bulk of the collection.  This information makes it easier to start thinking about how the final catalogue will be structured.

Then Jen came along as a student placement from Newcastle University's International Centre for Cultural and Heritage.  She used Grace’s original list to repackage everything. This is a very important stage, the original files and boxes need to be replaced with acid free materials, all corrosive metals are replaced with brass paperclips and the original file labels are recorded.  

Jen lending a hand and sorting the David Fickling Collection

Whilst repackaging Jen also reorganised.  She organised all of the files alphabetically by author, and arranged work by each author chronologically. This was a huge task and Jen spent much of her time at Seven Stories surrounded by files and boxes.  She also made the next step in processing much easier.  Jen had created a structure! 

All I have to do now is work my way through the lovely neat repackaged boxes and add everything to CALM.  For those of you not familiar with our archive-y terminology CALM (Collections Management for Archives, Libraries and Museums) is a massive database where we record everything that happens to our collections and every exhibition loan that comes through our door.  It’s also what we use to catalogue our collections.  

When we start to catalogue it’s really important that we keep people in mind.  It’s not just us archive-y folk and our volunteers that will use this catalogue but you -the researchers, the academics, and the enthusiasts - and our Seven Stories teams, our curators and our learning and participation team. There are a lot of uses for a collection like David Fickling’s and we need to have an idea of what they are, and what language and structures we need to use to make all of the important information easy to find.  At Seven Stories nothing sits on a shelf for too long. We believe that all of this work created and gathered by incredibly creative people should be shared with other creative people but this has to start with a comprehensive catalogue.

So, at the moment I am twenty-five boxes in and working hard.  It’s great fun to catalogue a collection like David Fickling’s because there is so much variation between files and though I know what is coming in a very practical sense (thanks to Grace’s listings and Jen’s labelling), there are still fun surprises. 

Original artwork by Paddy Mounter and book proofs for Tony Mitton's Riddledy Piggledy

When the catalogue is finished it’ll be made available online. However, if there are any interested researchers out there please do get in touch.

If you’re late to the exploration of the David Fickling collection check out the other diary entries written by our volunteer Grace.

Next week is The National Archives Explore your Archive Week.  So come explore our archives and join in the #exploreachives conversation.  Join us on Twitter, and Instagram using the handle @7stories and on Facebook by searching for 'Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books'.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or leave a comment.



Seven Stories was able to support the acquisition from David Fickling through support from a Heritage Lottery Fund ‘Collecting Cultures’ grant, which has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature. For more information on our HLF Collecting Cultures project see: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/news/latestnews/hlf.

Foraging through Fickling’s Archive Part 3

If you’re late to the exploration check out the other diary entries written by our volunteer Grace .  This is Grace’s final forage into the Fickling collection. 

Next week is The National Archives Explore your Archive Week.  So come explore our archives and join in the #exploreachives conversation.  Join us on Twitter, and Instagram using the handle @7stories and on Facebook by searching for 'Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books'.

Part 3

I managed to sort through the final few boxes today - they contained a massive array of little surprises. One box contained cover ideas, mock-ups and all the little extra bits of promotional material to go with several books such as Philip Pullman’s Lyra’s Oxford and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. In amongst these little gems were personal letters of Fickling’s that will have to be weeded out before the cataloguing process. 




The archive team have to ensure that all personal data is removed before making the archive available to the public. My main role in sorting through these boxes has been to gain an understanding, for the archivist, about what is actually there. The boxes were entirely unsorted and had not been looked at in some time, so it is no wonder there was so much interesting stuff. I have to say, although it is fantastic that Fickling donated so much material to Seven Stories, I can’t imagine, if I ever became famous enough, that I would be able to just hand over all my work! When looking I can clearly see the hours of work dedicated to the drafts, the time and effort dedicated to the editorial notes, the many letters between all the parties and I just feel like the archive contains a huge part of Fickling and his team’s life.  

- Grace Owens

Seven Stories was able to support the acquisition of David Fickling's archive through support from a Heritage Lottery Fund ‘Collecting Cultures’ grant. This has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature. For more information on our HLF Collecting Cultures project see: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/news/latestnews/hlf.

Foraging through Fickling’s Archive Part 2

Our volunteer Grace continues her exploration of our David Fickling Collection. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look at her first blog here. 

Next week is The National Archives Explore your Archive Week.  So come explore our archives and join in the #exploreachives conversation.  Join us on Twitter, and Instagram using the handle @7stories and on Facebook by searching for 'Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books'.

Part 2

Delving deeper into the boxes this week I came across a pile of papers which I personally thought were a bit boring – some of Fickling’s financial documents. Nothing major just a few bits of correspondence between illustrator and publisher with some figures nestled in there. I was a bit dismissive, these were not as exciting as the original material with lovely scribbles all over it, so I just sorted it into a box and labelled it. However later I discussed this with my tutor, just an off-the-cuff comment, and she illuminated how valuable this information can be. Apparently when it comes to actual facts and figures about who was paid what, how many books were published at the time and anything else of that nature, they are really hard to get hold of. As a researcher you need this kind of information to back up your claims, or to shed light on a particular book or author. Not so boring!

Letters, notebook and floppy discs from David Fickling's correspondence files

The day continued as before, I have probably enjoyed the rifling through letters, comments by editors, ideas by authors and illustrators a bit too much. I feel very nosy! I found some of the John Boyne The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas drafts and ideas for screenplay. I think it is really interesting to see the agent promoting John Boyne as an unknown author to the publishers – seeing how the dialogue works between the agent and publisher, how they advertise their client.  I found it quite funny to read the agent’s positivity about Boyne’s distressing story! This story was marketed at children and yet contains ideas and themes that are considered by many as controversial. However, it is still undeniably a highly successful book and now a film too. All of this is in post-it notes, letters and emails between all the parties, are all part of the story behind the story. 

- Grace Owens

Seven Stories was able to support the acquisition of David Fickling's archive through support from a Heritage Lottery Fund ‘Collecting Cultures’ grant. This has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature. For more information on our HLF Collecting Cultures project see: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/news/latestnews/hlf.

Foraging through Fickling’s Archive Part 1

This has been an extraordinarily busy year for our collections team with the arrival of so many new collections. We are very pleased that among the new arrivals is the David Fickling collection. 

Over the next few days we'll be posting the archival adventures of our fantastic volunteer Grace.  She was one of the first to get to know David Fickling's collection.  Grace is something of a children's literature expert after completing her MLitt in Children's Literature so it seemed fitting that she should work on a collection that represents such a wide range of children's book titles. Her insight and perspective into our collections has been invaluable and we are very thankful for the work that Grace has done for us.  We wish her the best of luck in her new job, spreading the love of children’s books as a teacher.  

Part 1

Today I was delving deep into the higgledy-piggledy piles of David Fickling’s archive, which had just arrived in the collection department, essentially looking for treasure. David Fickling, for those who don’t know, is a children’s editor and publisher. He has worked for a wide range of publishers including Oxford University Press and Scholastic, subsequently setting up David Fickling Books as an imprint under Random House, before finally becoming an independent publisher. He’s published authors such as Linda Newbery, John Boyne and Philip Pullman – big names, so you can see why I was intrigued by the pile of papers before me.

To be honest though, I was equally intrigued by the process the pieces in the archive had to go through before they arrived mounted and framed perfectly preserved on Seven Stories’ exhibition walls. They had arrived in the past few days in plastic storage boxes, and we knew there would be some valuable stuff in there, but I was the lucky person who was allowed to explore. I literally had to find out what was in there, and sort, the boxes so that the team knew what they were dealing with. Someone once mentioned to me that often archives have a backlog of work that is measured in years and after seeing this one collection I can see why. The boxes held drafts and drafts of work hoping to be published. For example, Varjak Paw The Outlaw by SF Said had over 8 drafts, all slightly different, many with yellow sticky notes all over with edits, all of which will have to be stored and preserved carefully. The sorting out was just the start.

I am very interested, as a researcher of children’s literature, in how the author and the editor work together to be published. I want to know what children are allowed to read, what is deemed acceptable, who is more adventurous - the author or the editor? Consequently, the yellow sticky notes fascinate me!

Many of the typescript drafts have post-it note comments from editors.  This is a typescript of John Dickinson's A Cup of the World (David Fickling Books, 2004). The post-its will all be removed and flattened in melinex sleeves for preservation. 

Anyway what did I find…? I found, in amongst one of the preliminary drafts for Tony Mitton’s Wayland and a short story of Jamila Gavin’s, several documents relating to the film The Golden Compass. Aha – pure gold!

- Grace Owens.

Next week is The National Archives Explore your Archive Week.  So come explore our archives and join in the #exploreachives conversation.  Join us on Twitter, and Instagram using the handle @7stories and on Facebook by searching for 'Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books'.

Seven Stories was able to support the acquisition of David Fickling's archive through support from a Heritage Lottery Fund ‘Collecting Cultures’ grant. This has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature. For more information on our HLF Collecting Cultures project see: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/news/latestnews/hlf.

All About: Mice

The Seven Stories Collection holds the entire archive of one particularly famous mouse, Angelina Ballerina. However, we have written so much about Angelina recently, we thought it would be nice to explore some of the many other mice we have in the store (purely literary mice, no real ones!). If you are feeling inspired to explore more Seven Stories mice, click here to see all our Angelina posts.

Draft material by Martin Waddell for The Great Green Mouse Disaster, illustrated by Phillipe Dupasquier (Andersen Press, 1981)

November's first mouse, or hoard of mice, is the fantastically imaginative book by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier. The book is virtually wordless, and as each page unfolds, the viewer is presented with a cross section of a hotel. Turn the page again and the action has moved on slightly, as you follow the progress of the rampaging hoard of green mice scattering throughout the hotel, causing chaos!

The archival material we hold runs to one, reasonably large, A4 file, full of Waddell's plans and notes for how the book should work. It being a particularly unusual book, I was very curious to work out how someone would go about planning it. It turns out that Waddell had some fairly concrete ideas about how he would like the book to look, and created a detailed 'story' for each characters progression on each page. The book is full of some brilliant detail, and it would take anyone a very long time to really find every different element. At the end of the book, there is even a list of things that Waddell thinks the reader might not have noticed!

Below is a sample of 'Story 4 The Mouseman', who is responsible for all this calamity:

'He is in the pursuit of the Mice and the Cat. In the cover illustration he will scoop up a milk bottle and this should be about his person as he runs. In 1 he is in the dining room, level 3, catching a glass of wine in mid air as it tumbled of the tray of the shocked waiter, who has been knocked aside by the jumping cat and cascading mice. Has has scooped a chicken from the table in passing, and is clambering over it - the table, not the chicken - to the stairs from 3 to 5.'

The Martin Waddell Collection, kindly donated by the author in 2008, consists of drafts and pre-publication material for 53 picture books and 63 educational books, including those published under the pseudonym Catherine Sefton. Several of the picture books have artwork represented elsewhere in the collection, such as Can't You Sleep Little Bear, illustrated by Barbara Firth, Tiny's Big Adventure, illustrated by John Lawrence and The Pig in the Pond, illustrated by Jill Barton. The collection also includes a series of notebooks and appointment diaries, and a series of printed books written by Waddell. 

Artwork by Emily Gravett for Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, (Macmillan, 2007), inlaid with picture of title page of the Seven Stories copy of the book. Artwork © Emily Gravett, 2007

This artwork is an example of a much smaller collection than the one mentioned above, as it consists of just this one piece of artwork! These mice are final pieces of artwork used in the end papers, and  the 'Phagophobia (Fear of being eaten)' page. Another incredibly imaginative mouse led tale, this follows our hero, Little Mouse, on his journey through a book exploring all his different fears - entomophobia, clinophobia, acrophobia - amongst others. The pages are covered in little mouse 'nibble' marks, with several fold out pages of additional sumptuous detail, such as the 'Visitor's Map of the ISLE OF FRIGHTS'.

This collection may only contain one piece of artwork, executed in pencil, acrylic, and watercolour, but there is also an additional mouse illustration on the reverse of the card. The wider Seven Stories Collection actually does contain other work by Emily Gravett, also, by strange coincidence, of mice. Gravett kindly donated the piece above, and also her preliminary artwork, final pieces and prints of the final work for 'A was an apple pie' in Elizabeth Hammill's Over the Hills and Far Away. Some of this work is currently on display in Rhyme Around the World, at Seven Stories in Newcastle.

A Counting Book by Helen Craig, published by Aurum Press Ltd. c.1980

This month’s printed book featuring mice is A Counting Book by Helen Craig. Of course this tiny little mouse-filled book is by the illustrator of that other famous mouse Angelina Ballerina – oops!  We weren’t meant to mention her this month but this is too good an opportunity to showcase a less familiar book by Helen Craig, and one which was published before Angelina burst into the world in 1983.

This printed book comes from Pat Garrett’s Counting Book collection and is one of the smallest books in our collection, measuring just 5.5 cm square.  It comes in its own little slipcase which physically constrains the long concertina of pages.  Each double-page spread features colour illustrations of mice amusingly constructing the numbers 0 to10 out of a variety of handy objects including balloons, string, flowers, bubbles, and (as in the photo) a jigsaw puzzle ‘7’ which looks suspiciously like it’s made from pieces of cheese! The final 3 double spreads somehow accommodates 100 tiny mice!

Pat Garrett kindly donated her Counting Book collection to Seven Stories in 2006.  It consists of over 640 counting and number related books, mostly published between 1960 and 2000. Whilst this collection is made up mainly of picture books, it also includes books in a variety of formats such as board books, rag books, pop-up books, activity books, as well as three 19th Century mathematics text books and even friezes, an advent calendar, and plastic counting blocks.

To find out about Pat Garrett’s Alphabet book collection, check out our ‘Bird’ blog in May earlier this year by clicking here.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.