Welcome to Oscar the Elephant, Agatha and Rumiko! These are not the names Scarlett, my daughter, has for them but how they are known in the ‘Tales by Torchlight’ series. 
Above is a photo of my youngest child, Scarlett, holding this small sample of the mountain of fluffies that inhabit her room. She doesn’t mind me renaming them, but she does get annoyed when I keep trying to hide them away in a safe cupboard, so I know where they are for drawing!
I love books and have many book shelves in my house. We have all kinds of books, from Proust to Pratchett and I like the idea of a little girl naming her toys by taking random names from the spines of her parent’s books. With this idea in mind, I added in aspects of the characters from particular stories. So we have:
Oscar the Elephant (Osacr Wilde) – enjoys food, friends and art
Agatha the rabbit (Agatha Christie) – has big ears, is nosey and doesn’t miss a thing
Rumiko the monkey (Rumiko Takahashi, Manga writer) – brave, likes adventure
Douglas the alien (Douglas Adams) – a bit grumpy, likes to moan, not a born hero!
Issac the bear (Isaac Asimov) – small but clever and thoughtful, likes things with buttons
Scarlett wants to write an entry herself about what it has been like to help me with these books. Ella and Scarlett look very similar so I have used old photos of both of them as reference. I think they have really enjoyed getting involved and making drawings for me – I’ll let you know how I construct the pictures soon.
REBECCA JELBERT, painter and art historian 