Once Upon a Time, Though It Wasn’t in Your Time, and It Wasn’t in My Time, and It Wasn’t in Anybody Else’s Time…

Once Upon a Time, Though It Wasn’t in Your Time, and It Wasn’t in My Time, and It Wasn’t in Anybody Else’s Time… Alan Garner Illustrated by Norman Messenger First UK edition, first printing. London: Dorling Kindersley, 1993. Hardcover with dust jacket. ISBN 0-7513-7007-X / 9780751370072. 29 pages. Price £7.99 on the dust-jacket flap (uncut). Condition Book: Near fine / perfect. Tight, square, and clean; boards bright with only the lightest edge wear consistent with careful handling; gilt decoration and lettering crisp; endpapers and text block pristine with no inscriptions, stamps, or previous-owner marks. Dust jacket: Very good. Complete and unclipped; minor edge rubbing and the lightest surface wear only; colour and lettering remain strong. A handsome, highly presentable copy. Physical description Cloth boards in deep maroon/purple with a gilt knife-and-ribbon device on the upper cover and gilt lettering to the spine. Colour-illustrated endpapers repeating a pattern of running bulls and dogs. The dust jacket is a striking cream ground with an ornate border of ivy, a snail, a ladybird, and a moth; the central illustration shows a girl perched on a church steeple topped by a cockerel weather-vane, with rolling green landscape below. Interior illustrations by Norman Messenger are full-colour, highly detailed, and often dreamlike or surreal in character, integrated throughout the text. Contents Three traditional folk tales retold by Alan Garner in spare, rhythmic prose expressly designed for reading aloud: “The Fox, the Hare, and the Cock”; “The Girl and the Geese”; and the cumulative, tall-tale-like “Battibeth”. The stories possess the logic of dreams and draw on cumulative and progressive narrative structures found across many cultures. Messenger’s illustrations create a timeless, slightly uncanny visual world that complements Garner’s oral-rooted language. Author Alan Garner (born 1934) is one of Britain’s most distinctive writers for children and young adults. His earlier novels, including The Owl Service (Carnegie Medal) and Red Shift, are noted for their deep engagement with landscape, myth and the northern English setting of his childhood in Cheshire. In this 1993 picture book he turns to traditional cumulative folk tales, retelling them with rhythmic precision and a light, almost teasing tone that works particularly well when read aloud. The text is deliberately spare, leaving space for Messenger’s large illustrations. Illustrator Norman Messenger (1934–2024) was a British illustrator born in Liverpool. After working as an advertising art director in London he turned to freelance illustration in the late 1970s and became a founding member of the Association of Illustrators. His children’s books are noted for meticulous draughtsmanship, playful invention, and a slightly surreal sensibility. Among his best-known titles are Annabel’s House (winner of the US Redbook Award), Making Faces, Imagine, and The Land of Neverbelieve. He lived for many years in Gloucestershire. His illustrations for this Garner volume are among his most atmospheric, combining precise natural detail with dreamlike transformations. Publisher & edition Dorling Kindersley, founded in 1974, became internationally known for its highly illustrated reference and children’s books. This is the true first edition, first published in Great Britain in 1993 by Dorling Kindersley Limited, London (9 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden). A near-identical American edition appeared the same year under the ISBN 1564583813. The present copy is the original UK printing, with the British publisher’s imprint, ISBN, and original £7.99 price on the jacket. A fine example of a beautifully produced 1990s picture book that brings together one of Britain’s foremost folkloric storytellers and an illustrator of exceptional visual invention. Ideal for collectors of Alan Garner, Norman Messenger, or high-quality illustrated children’s books of the period.…