I LOVE ALBERT! 💜 I can't believe I'm saying that I adore Albert the Teddy Bear more than Winnie-the-Pooh or Paddington Bear, but I am.
Alison Jezard has created such a lovely, sweet, charming, helpful and optimistic character. I absolutely adore her writing and she excels at cozy descriptions of home and food. Her stories remind me very much of Rosamunde Pilcher, if she wrote children's chapter books.
The conversations are lively and fun, with black and white illustrations that bring such a huge smile to my face and warm hugs to my heart.
I cannot recommend the Albert books more highly and I'm on the search for nine more hardcover copies for my tiny collection. Sadly, they're very hard to find (even online). The most adorable books (and character) ever! 😍
I remember liking this as a child - one of many books about bears - and reread it forty years later. Eastend London teddy bear lives in a basement flat and thinks nothing of chatting to poorly caged zoo animals. Could be a comment on social class or modern slavery - but really just a teddy bear book. What's fascinating in this 1968 book is the snapshots of old byegone London of possibly a generation earlier - barrow markets, rag & bone men, rain-flooded basements, horses & carts, pearly Easter parades. Probably too anachronistic to appeal well to children today.