A Pipkin of Pepper
Background Information
When my daughter was three years old I urgently needed a picture book
dealing with the issue of being lost. I couldn’t find one. It seemed a
good time to cook up a sequel to “Pumpkin Soup’. Consequently, ‘A Pipkin of
Pepper’, the further adventures of Duck, Cat, and Squirrel, has a ‘Lost in
the city’ theme”.

Leaving the domestic drama of the old white cabin, the three friends
journey to the city in pursuit of salt for their pumpkin soup. Once there,
Duck, swayed by the sight of pepper in a shop window, neglects to hold on
tight, and is lost. In his panic he rashly forgets his instructions to stay
in one place and flaps away in pursuit of the others. The resulting fiasco
is told as much in the pictures as the text. I wanted children to see for
themselves the ensuing chaos as Duck, Cat, and Squirrel, blunder back and
forth before being reunited.

Other bits of advice are slipped in. The bewildered Duck eventually has the
sense to ask a mother with small children for help, and subsequently a
shopkeeper and the emergency services are involved. The idea of being alone
in a city is frightening enough for most small children. I didn’t want to
dwell on the scary issue of undesirable characters, although there are a
couple of foxes who lurk in the background of some of the illustrations
should some parents wish to pursue this point. For the rest they’re in
amongst the mêlée of the crowds.

The pepper pot metropolis derived from some sketches made in a coffee shop
boasting an incredible collection of coffee pots and pepper grinders. Lined
up on shelves they suggested the outline of a cityscape. Back at my desk I
tried to build a certain rush hour energy into the pepper city, using
bewildering perspective, electric colour, and a small measure of collage for
a flatter graphic appearance, As always the illustrations are also infused
with some of the visual flotsam and jetsam, which washed by as I worked on
them. The shop frontage of the Modern Pastry Shop in Boston. The paintings
of Paul Klee, and. The colours of a fresh rainbow trout which sat in a bowl
on my desk as I painted it and lent an unwanted fishy aroma to that piece of
artwork .

Yet although a major part of ‘A Pippin of Pepper’ journeys far from the
woodland scenes of ‘Pumpkin Soup’, for those who were hoping for more of the
same, the book begins and ends with cosy mayhem in the old white cabin. Will
there be pepper in the pumpkin soup? You’ll have to read the book and see.