Kate Kellaway
Review in the Observer, 16 April, 2006
Robin Richmond's The Storm
Tree, (The White Stork Press £30) is a remarkable limited-edition picture
book by a dramatic painter with a powerful story to tell. Rene and Edith are
elderly French farmers whose
land has a 'storm tree', blasted by years of lightning strikes. It becomes a
kind of conductor for Edith, teaching
her about her fugitive desires by bringing her a transforming gift: a white
stork. Sophisticated children will cherish
the story's insight into the tug between freedom and home, solitude and ties
that, rightly, bind (available at Tate
Britain or www.robinrichmond.net).