Hasta La Ideas

Andrew Rae, Emily Forgot, Oliver Jeffers and Steven Appleby are among fifteen illustrators that have contributed to Curious Stories, a book conceived by creative agency Dorothy to raise money for children’s charity Curious Minds…

Curious Minds works in the North West of the UK to make sure all children have access to quality arts and cultural learning activities, providing kids with opportunities to be creative. Dorothy’s idea for this fund-raising campaign was to create a book full of insights from well-loved British creative folk who were asked to contribute stories about what inspired them when they were children.

The 104 page 16 x 20cm hardback book collects 46 personal stories by a host of celebrities and famous creatives including Dame Judi Dench, Sir Terence Conran, David Shrigley, Heston Blurmenthal and Miranda Hart, with each story brought to live with an illustration. Here are some spreads from the book:

Al Murphy illustrates Jeremy Deller’s story about how watching Top of the Pops inspired him as a kid

Andrew Rae illustrated Judi Dench’s story of being inspired by seeing her two brothers in a school play

This brick wall of boredom was drawn by Emily Forgot to accompany Jenny Éclair’s contribution

Matthew “the horse” Hodson imagined a young Miranda Hart watching Eric Morcambe on TV

And Al Murphy pictured a young Wayne Hemingway being inspired by his mother’s thriftiness

The full list of contributing illustrators is thus: Al Murphy, Andrew Rae, Andrew Wightman, Deanna Halsall, Emily Forgot, Giulio Miglietta, Katey-Jean Harvey, Laura Barnard, Matthew Hodson, Nick Sharratt, Oliver Jeffers, Rob Bailey, Robert Hunter, Steven Appleby, and Tracy Worrall.

Curious Stories (£20 plus p&p) is available from curiousstories.org.uk.