Nutmeg

by
David Lucas
Illustrator: David Lucas

Nutmeg, the eponymous heroine, is tired of the usual menu: cardboard, string and sawdust for every meal, served up by Uncle Nicodemus to Nutmeg and her cousin Nesbit in their hideaway seaside home.

After she finds a genie in a bottle, Nutmeg is granted three wishes. But her simple requests - to have something different for breakfast, lunch and supper - have wholly unexpected results and the liveliness of post-genie life is expressed with a vivacity that contrasts with the muted palette of the opening images.

This classic children's story about freeing the imagination is a welcome follow-up to David Lucas's debut picture book (as author-illustrator), Halibut Jackson.

David Lucas

David Lucas was born in Middlesbrough and grew up in Hackney, in east London. His stories are a mix of fairytale and autobiography, and his aim in all his work is to communicate his belief that the world is a magical place. As a child he enjoyed drawing and writing, and he went on to study at St Martin’s School of Art and then the Royal College of Art. He enjoys football, cooking and history.

In 2008 he was chosen as one of Booktrust's Best New Illustrators, as part of their Big Picture initiative. Halibut Jackson was 'favourite children's book of 2004' on Amazon.com, and picked as one of the top 10 children's books of that year (across all genres) by both Publisher's Weekly and Child magazine in the US. David currently lives in Lewes in East Sussex.

Read an interview with David.

http://www.davidlucas.org.uk/

David Lucas