Best-known for creating Milly-Molly-Mandy, Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Bunchy, though equally charming, is often overlooked. The ten stories about her pre-school life with her grandmother capture the simplicity of childhood imagination and play. Feeling lonely, Bunchy makes a pastry doll to be a playmate; bringing in the clothes pegs, Bunchy realises that they can be dressed and turned into little play people. It’s simple, domestic stuff with a period feel that quaint but not off putting.
Little Bunchy lives all alone with her grandmother in a cottage in the country. It's quite a long walk to the village and Bunchy is too young for school yet so she has no one to play with. But Bunchy is never lonely because she has her own very special friends - the pastry girl, the Scribbles family, the naughty clothes-peg people and the little wooden sailor-doll. Set in a by-gone era, here are ten stories written with warmth and affection, by the author of Milly-Molly-Mandy.
Joyce Lankester Brisley (1896-1978) was born in Bexhill, England. Her first stories about Milly-Molly-Mandy were printed in 1925 in the Christian Science Monitor, and a collection appeared in book form in 1928. She wrote and illustrated six collections of stories about Milly-Molly-Mandy. The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook was published in the UK in September 1996. She also illustrated books by other authors, including the classic Ursula Moray Williams story, Adventures of a Little Wooden Horse.
