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Birthdate: 1949-08-18
Gender: female
Short biography: English illustrator of children's books. She has provided the illustrations for the pop‐up book Puss in Boots (1977) and Russell Hoban's La Corona and the Tin Frog (1978). In addition she has produced a Copycats series in 1984 consisting of several small books in which a cat imagines himself to be some other animal such as a parrot cat, crab cat, and elephant cat. Bayley works in watercolours and uses a stippling technique of small dots that make her illustrations lush in exquisite detail
Nationality: UK
Associated Place (for map): UK

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12 reviews

AbigailAdams26 8,062 reviews

One Old Oxford Ox by Nicola Bayley

Alliterative verses describing various creatures and their activities—i.e., "Two toad totally tired trying to trot to Tisbury"—are used to count from one to twelve in this picture book from British author/artist Nicola Bayley. Each verse is presented on the right-hand page of a two-page spread, under that numeral, while a small but lovely picture depicting the actions in the verse is placed on the left-hand page facing it...

Published in 1977 and long out of print, One Old Oxford Ox is show more not a book I would likely have encountered, had I not seen it recommended on the LibraryThing page of another book (an original fairy-tale) that I had added to my catalog. Having enjoyed some other books Nicola Bayley illustrated—Antonia Barber's The Mousehole Cat and Gretchen Woelfle's Katje, the Windmill Cat—I decided to request this one from the library, and am glad I did. It's a little odd, and I'm not sure I would strongly recommend it, either as a counting book or anything else, but I enjoyed the trippy little verses, and the somewhat surreal fairy-tale scenes. I only wish the illustrations had been a little larger! show less

May 22, 2025

lycomayflower 1,191 reviews

Can I Come Too? by Brian Patten

A gorgeously illustrated picture book about a mouse who decides to try to find the biggest creature in the world. As she meets more and more animals bigger than herself, they all ask if they can come along on the adventure. I had three suspicions about how the story might come out (that the biggest creature would be a whale, or the group of friends as a whole, or God) and it turned out to be the most straight forward of these. A lovely book, whose anthropomorphized animals are never-the-less show more drawn very realistically and whose message of inclusiveness and being together is a delight. Recommended. show less

Feb 16, 20191 other review

Gold_Gato 242 reviews

Spider cat by Nicola Bayley

Now if I were a Puttycat,
I would be who I am.
Not a doggy, not a mousy
No, not even Uncle Sam.
But I am not a Puttycat
And so I must go on
Weaving my web
Round a spider's lexicon.

[a:Nicola Bayley|53243|Nicola Bayley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1272901599p2/53243.jpg] does it again with stylish art for a cat dreaming of being a spider.

Sep 16, 2013

Gold_Gato 242 reviews

Elephant cat by Nicola Bayley

The daydreaming cats from Nicola Bayley return, this time as an elephant. This excellent volume from the COPYCATS series is a smorgasbord of color and imagination. Children will love learning about elephants and the cat who can't stop wanting to be something else. Sounds kinda human to me.

Book Season = Year Round

Sep 16, 2013

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