Some multi-layered stories, like this one, slowly enter your consciousness, gradually deepening in meaning and lightly triggering the emotions as text and illustrations work together. With each rereading, the experience of words and images working together deepens. Josh Pyke is well known as a singer-song writer who explores deep emotions. A picture book is the perfect medium for this story, inspired Pyke says, by his mum’s battle with Alzheimer’s. Sometimes ‘less said’ texts offer opportunities to read between the lines, interpret deeper meanings and personalise the story presented according to individual needs. That is the case here.
The opening four-line stanza appears in classic poetic form with alternating rhyming lines. Sometimes rhyming texts are awkward working against reader involvement. Not here. The slow pace, readers’ build up to realising that this is a book about Alzheimer’s, is highly successful. Either as a read aloud text or a silent, personal reading experience, the emotional tone here is nuanced and gradually realised by the reader.
Ronojoy Ghosh’s digital illustrations never overtake the text. Just the opposite. In combination with the text, the pacing and realisation of what this story is about, snares the reader about midway into the story. Thereafter, emotions are fully engaged. The illustrations offer multiple perspectives, and varied scenes viewed in photographs, long distance scenes from above and moments of tranquillity. These astutely guide the onlookers’ emotions. Not until the story ends with an illustration of young and old hands entwined is there a final satisfying sense that sharing these memories is deeply satisfying for both.
An earlier Josh Pyke picture book, ‘Family Tree,’ also illustrated by Ronojoy Ghosh, was chosen as the National Simultaneous Storytime book for 2022. ‘These Long-loved Things’ is shortlisted in the Children’s Book Council of Australia picture book category for 2025.
Picture Books for Older Readers
