The Tiger Who Came To Tea

Today Little Owl and I visited the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green to see their Judith Kerr retrospective exhibition. For those of you who don’t know, Judith Kerr wrote and illustrated children’s classics such as The Tiger who Came To Tea and the Mog books. She also wrote a wonderful book called When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit telling the story of her childhood flight from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I loved seeing the original illustrations close up. It’s always interesting for me to see the process behind an image too. I liked seeing her sketchbooks and roughs. The exhibiton was beautifully put together. Little Owl especially loved the child-sized kitchen in which she could pretend to make a cup of tea for a giant tiger sat at the kitchen table. She also loved Mog’s giant cat bed in which she could have fitted ten times over! I thought the Museum of Childhood was a great place. Although many of the exhibits couldn’t be touched because they were too fragile there was lots that could be. Little Owl liked putting on a Punch & Judy show in the proper puppet show stand but couldn’t quite get the hang of keeping her head out of sight. She also liked the big police car she could sit in and the sand pit. How wonderful that it isn’t just a museum about childhood in the past but a place where childhood is actually happening right there and then.