English illustrator, Jane Hissey began her children's book career because a publisher spotted a series of greeting cards she had done and encouraged her to write and illustrate a children's book using the characters depicted on her cards. Her first book Old Bear was published in 1988 and other books with the same nursery characters followed. Hissey's characters are drawn from real life and feature her own toys. The library has the characters Little Bear and Jolly Tall as toys to loan out with the books and the videos of the stories are probably even more popular than the books. All of her stories about childhood toys who come to life are gentle and very young children feel very safe and content while viewing or listening to them. In this sense they are old-fashioned, by today's standards but my feeling is that they are good for encouraging children to be involved in their own creative play.
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