Our Tower

• Joseph Coelho
• Richard Johnson

It isn’t difficult to appreciate Joseph Coelho being The Children’s Laureate from 2022-2024 when you consider just how beautiful and poignant his writing is, and I am delighted to be sharing this gorgeous picture book here on my blog, Our Tower. Just take a look at the cover to get an indication as to how stunning the illustrations are too.

In the format of rhyming sentences we become familiar with the concrete tower that is home to many, and a trio of the children that dwell there long to see more of the lush greens they can see on the horizon from their windows high up in the tower block. The children are fed up with the abundance of man made materials surrounding them and their homes, from the concrete tower itself to the roads and paths that paint their surroundings, and so they head off determined to locate the big tree that they see from their windows amongst the greenery, literally looking to find out if the grass is greener on the other side!

A power that resides
in the smiles of our neighbours.
A magic that seeps out
when we swap our home-baked flavours.

When the trio of adventurous children arrive amongst nature they seek out THE tree that drew them to come there, and detail itself makes the tree incredibly special, and when they do find it they are rewarded with an entire new world that they find within its trunk, and it is a magical destination filled with the most astonishingly beautiful examples of nature at its finest, if not more so, and the children are in awe at what they are seeing around them whilst thrust in the heart of nature itself. When they come across a strange old man with magical powers there and are gifted a special amulet of sorts they find that their perspective of things has been forever altered, and the magical land they are in has a sense of normalcy to it now, and they take the opportunity to leave it behind and head home.

Things have changed when they get back to the tower block, and they now see the place they call home as a magical destination filled with life, love, and growth, and the contrast in their perceptions of things to earlier in the book is hugely apparent to the reader, even getting us to consider our perspectives and perceptions of things within our own communities and lives. This is such a powerful read in that regard, and you’d expect no less from Joseph Coelho, Waterstones Children’s Laureate, an incredible talent in the world of children’s literature – his poetry is second to none. The illustrations in this book are by Richard Johnson, the incredible talent behind the illustrations in titles including The Thing at 52 ( a Picture Book written by Ross Montgomery) and Birdsong, Nightjar, and Little House ( Barrington Stoke titles written by Katya Balen) to name but a few. The illustrations within Our Tower are lush and vibrant when depicting the scenes in which the children head into the surrounding nature, with a magical feel to the colour palette used, and this contrasts massively with the dreary and dull design of the tower block scenes. These are honestly some of the most beautiful illustrations I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying in a book, with as much detail to the unfolding story coming from the pictures as it does the text itself.

I love how this book was written from Joseph’s own experiences growing up in a tower block building, and how he takes the stereotype of the “concrete jungle” and turns it on its head by developing the children’s impression of where they call home in the latter part of this book, which is not an easy thing to achieve in a Picture Book, not least because they are much shorter in length than a Chapter Book for example, but in unison with the illustrations we are also encouraged to return back home to the tower with a brand new appreciation for all the good elements that living within a community under the same rood bestows. I hope that Joseph and Richard work together again in the future because I have loved all that this book has to offer, and cherish the impression it has left on me whenever I happen across tower blocks and city skylines too.

Our Tower is published by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books and is available to purchase from all good booksellers.