This delightful children's book follows the exploits of a young teacher Miss Cushy Butterpat. Everyone likes Miss Butterpat but everyone, from her grandmother to her pupils think she is as ordinary as they come and no one thinks she will do anything exciting during the summer holidays. How wrong they are! Miss Butterpat with her newly knitted blue jumper dresses up as a sailor and sails away to South America, she dances in the local carnival and then goes off to explore the jungle. She's almost squashed by a boa constrictor, has to sleep in a tent, and even ends up using her jumper to help her fly across a river. All in all Miss Butterpat has a wonderful time, spending time with local Indians and becoming an adept drum player, to playing poker where she wins a bag of gold which she uses to pay for a luxury cruise back home. However upon her return to school and her pupils, Miss Butterpat is unable to convince anyone what she has done so she pretends all she did for the holiday was stay with her grandmother, and help look after her garden. This is lovely book with colorful pictures, and just enough text for a new reader who wants something fun and different, which this book certainly is! Miss Butterpat is a wonderful creation, especially at the end of the book when she decides to knit a jumper that she will use when she eventually climbs Mount Everest.

For those with children of a very curious nature, these are the books for you. Everyone in the house couldn't put this one down. Excellent pictures, not just drawings. Are they the real thing? Children will also be introduced to sonar and mountianeers. Science becomes very interesting.

Although one doesn't necessarily get to know Eric Gill the individual any better through this book, Malcolm Yorke does an admirable job presenting the man through his works. I was anticipating more of a biography than a survey-cum-biography, but the format works well to distill the broad (and usually overlapping) scope of Gill's artwork and personality into something approaching manageablity. While I concur that it makes the most sense to start, as Yorke does, with Gill's writing, I found this section to be the most tedious. However one musn't fault Yorke for this, as indeed this can be generally attributed to Gill's own rather byzantine writing style. The following chapters (including many fine examples of Gill's broad talents) make the slow start well worthwhile.

In sum, if one has any interest in learning more about one of the 20th century's most fascinating artists, Malcom Yorke's "Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit" is about as comprehensive an account as one can get. Highly recommended.