Little Bookshop

Here you can see some of her illustrations and sketches for books. Beatrix stayed true to her approach throughout her career - light watercolour illustrations, lots of air and all her characters were animals. I think she liked working with these characters because she loved nature since childhood and she had rabbits, frogs and other models living with her. Her drafts - are made according to the format of the book into which she pasted the sketches of the illustration and wrote the text, to see the layout of the finished book.

Beatrix loved talking to children, most of all to her friends' children, and she wrote letters to them. One day her little friend Noel was going through a difficult period when she was recovering from an illness. Beatrix made up and sketched a little story about rabbits in the letter to make Noel happy. Later it was from this letter that Beatrix Potter's first book was born, called The tale of Peter rabbit.
It struck everyone with its lightness and the adventures of the main character. In fact, although it's a small book for children, there's a lot going on in it.

If you don't know the story, here it is: there's a mama rabbit and she has four children, one of whom is Peter. She sends everyone for a walk with the words - you go where you want, just don't go into the old uncle's garden, because the old uncle has already made a pie of your daddy when he went in to eat his vegetables. So that's the easy story. Of course, Peter went into the garden and had his miserable adventures. The story ended well, the rabbit got home and had a spoon of chamomile tea. This book is over 100 years old, it was published in 1902, but it's still a classic of children's literature. But as is often the case, in the beginning publishers did not want to publish this book and Beatrix published it only for her friends in a modest black and white edition. And now the book is being published in huge numbers.

What came next was a series of books about the Rabbit and there were all fairly good and positive characters. One day one of Beatrice's little friends said that he was tired of hearing about the good Rabbit and wanted a story about the bad Rabbit. So Beatrice wrote a fairy tale about a bad, fierce angry rabbit. And look at the wonderful format this book was published in. A panorama book that folded into such a neat envelope. This format is very pretty, but the publishers didn't like it - the book is now published in a standard format, and collectors are after the old editions.

Beatrice has really become a role model for many generations of artists and authors, she is a model of classic illustration that is still copied today.

Have you read her books as a child?

And as an adult?