[HELP] UK picture book, early 90s: girl wakes up on birthday in gothic cliff castle, eats giant eggs from egg cups, dragon involved. Big-eyed illustration style.
[HELP] UK picture book, early 90s: girl wakes up on birthday in gothic cliff castle, eats giant eggs from egg cups, dragon involved. Big-eyed illustration style.
I’ve been trying to identify a picture book from my primary school library in the early 1990s. It was very popular and everyone wanted to borrow it, but I’ve never been able to track it down.
UK picture book, landscape format roughly A4, mostly illustrations. The story follows a girl on what I believe is her birthday. The world she lives in is fantasy rather than realistic.
The opening shows her waking up alone in a four-poster bed. She lives in a gothic, Transylvanian-style castle or house perched on a rocky cliff. Not dark or scary, just fantastical and dreamlike. She goes down for breakfast and there are two giant eggs in egg cups, roughly ostrich or dinosaur-sized, hard boiled. No family visible. She then gets ready and goes to school. There is a dragon involved somewhere in the story.
The illustration style was very distinctive. Characters had enormous eyes with small pupils and irises, giving them a wide, slightly startled look. The style sits somewhere between Babette Cole and Tim Burton: colourful, quirky, and slightly off-kilter, but warm rather than sinister. Medium level of illustration detail.
Any help appreciated.