Author tucks in for a good read

STRETHAM children's author Jean Adamson celebrated the launch of a new series of her popular Topsy and Tim books at Tiddlywinks Nursery last week to thank the children for their help with one of the new titles.

Mrs Adamson, 74, has entertained generations of children with the twins' adventures and began the stories in 1960 with her late husband Gareth.

The new books, Topsy and Tim Have Chickenpox, Car Games and New Lunchboxes are introducing the characters to a new generation, including the children at Stretham's Tiddlywinks Nursery, who Mrs Adamson described as "brilliant".

"I researched 'New Lunchboxes' thoroughly at Tiddlywinks," she said.

"The children let me look in their lunchboxes and told me what they liked and the staff were brilliant, too."

She said she was told children are warned not to swap lunches in case any of them are allergic to something, and that the children are told to put anything they do not eat back into their lunch boxes, so their parents can monitor what they have eaten.

Mrs Adamson and her husband Gareth met while studying illustration at Goldsmiths College, London, and decided to work on children's books together. The Topsy and Tim stories were a huge success and were a radical break with the children's stories of the time.

"Everything for children then was along the lines of Noddy and Andy Pandy," Mrs Adamson said.

"A lot of other books had witches or dragons and we wanted to do something that was more about real children."

She said many of the stories were based on the experiences of the couple's own children.

"The playgroup hadn't been invented when we first started, but when our children went we wrote about children going to playgroup for the first time.