Daily Times

Any fan who grew up reading Roald Dahl will be familiar with those illustrations of Matilda In The Library Armchair or Charlie In The Glass Elevator.

Sir Quentin Blake, who’s behind these familiar images, will be illustrating the newest edition of Billy & The Minpins. The previous edition, which featured coloured illustrations by Patrick Benson, is still available in print.

“I was delighted to be asked to illustrate Roald’s Billy & The Minpins; it feels like the cornerstone in our long collaboration together. As Roald Dahl’s parting gift, Patrick Benson’s illustrations in the original edition were perfectly suited to the lyrical feel of The Minpins,” Hello! magazine quotes Sir Quentin Blake as saying. “This new edition has nearly 50 pages of black-and-white drawings, which meant I could enjoy myself tremendously as I went into all the details of Billy’s exploits and adventures with the Minpins in the mysterious forest!”

‘This new edition has nearly 50 pages of black-and-white drawings, which meant I could enjoy myself tremendously as I went into all the details of Billy’s exploits and adventures with the Minpins in the mysterious forest!’

Billy & The Minpins, originally published in 1991, is the last book to be written by Dahl. It’s the story of Billy who must save the small, tree-dwelling Minpins, whose children are the size of matchsticks, from the perennially hungry “terrible, galloping Gruncher”.

Luke Kelly, MD of the Roald Dahl Literary Estate and Dahl’s grandson, told The Bookseller, “We think it’s perfect as Billy is a quintessential Roald Dahl hero and deserves to be seen in the same light as Charlie, Matilda, James, Sophie and all the other child heroes readers around the world know and love.”

Billy & The Minpins is being published by Penguin Random House and will be out on September 7, in time for Dahl’s birthday on September 13.

Published in Daily Times, August 16^th 2017.