Editions

Jonadab and Rita

Jonadab and Rita

Jonadab is a very special toy - he can fly! But Minnie has so many other toys that often Jonadab and his friend Rita the mouse find themselves sad and lonely and left behind in the toy box ... One moonlit night, tired of being ignored, Jonadab flies away and joins a magical fairy feast. But then he can't get back in to Minnie's room, and he discovers his new fairy friends are not as kind as he thought.

Will courageous Rita be able to save Jonadab, and will Minnie realise the value of the toy she has lost?

A wonderful picture book about getting lost and finding your way home from one of our most popular and best-loved storytellers.

Reviews

  • Shirley Hughes is one of the greatest writers and illustrators for pre-schoolers that we have. The creator of the endearing, enduring Alfie series, she understands a small child's world to perfection . . . Substitute child for donkey, and you have just the way far too many children feel, especially in the holidays. The expressions on Jonadab's face - contented, bored, defiant, amazed, lonely, wretched and utterly despairing - are all too familiar

    The Times

  • Picturebooks need to engage and delight children while also entertaining the adults who read them aloud. Hughes's new picturebook achieves this end triumphantly

    Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times

  • This tale of friendship, and possible loss, is told simply and powerfully and enriched with lively, enveloping illustrations both in colour and black and white. It is superb

    Carousel

  • Children will love this little tale with great illustrations and learn a valuable lesson about appreciating their friends

    South Wales Argus

  • A magical tale

    Sunday Express

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About the Author

Shirley Hughes

Shirley was born in West Kirby, near Liverpool, and studied fashion and dress design at Liverpool Art School, before continuing her studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford. She then embarked on a career as a freelance illustrator in London, where she still lives today. She illustrated other writers' work, including Noel Streatfeild, Alison Uttley, Ian Seraillier, Margaret Mahy and notably Dorothy Edwards's My Naughty Little Sister series. Shirley began to write and draw her own picture books when her children were young. Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger and the Alfie series. Shirley Hughes has won the Other Award, the Eleanor Farjeon Award, and the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration twice, for Dogger in 1977 and for Ella's Big Chance in 2003. In 2007 Dogger was voted the public's favourite Greenaway winner of all time. Shirley received an OBE in 1999 for services to Children's Literature, and a CBE in 2017. She is the first recipient of Booktrust's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Shirley Hughes

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