The Tiger Who Came To Tea by Judith Kerr has long been one of our favourite books – ever since Kitty was very small. So it seemed like the obvious place to start when I decided to build some children’s book based Brickheadz to go in Nell’s bedroom.
My first attempt was prompted by one of the LEGO lockdown challenges. As you can see, I didn’t really have much idea what I was doing at that point.
We had one proper Brickhead between us back then, hardly any flat tiles in the right colours and not enough eyes!
Later — having done a little research on ‘the anatomy of a Brickhead‘ (https://brickset.com/article/26620/the-anatomy-of-a-brickheadz) and acquired a few specialist bricks — I tried again.
Now we are up to Version 3.0. There’s still work to do, but I am hoping that — with a little more tweaking — I might be able to develop this as a project for LEGO Ideas ine day . . . . (https://ideas.lego.com)
Nell re-read the book again recently and this was her take on it:
I love this book. I remember when we went to see a show of it before Lockdown.
My favourite part is when there is a knock at the door and the Mum says all the people who it can’t be, and it is actually a tiger!
But I don’t think it was really a tiger. Sophie and her Mummy ate all the food and played a trick on her Daddy! Actually, it was just the little cat you see in the picture in the street who came to visit, and they are exaggerating.
That’s my other favourite part: when they go out to a cafe in the night time, and have sausages, chips and ice cream for supper!!
Daddy loves it when the Tiger eats ALL the tea things, ALL the food cooking on the stove and ALL the packets in the cupboard, and drinks ALL the tea in the teapot, ALL of Daddy’s beer and ALL the water in the tap (so Sophie can’t even have a bath)”.
Then she made up her own story loosely based on the original and we recreated it in LEGO:
The Dog Who Came To Dinner by Nell Pendleton
“Once upon a time Nell was having dinner with her Mum and Dad when there was a knock at the door. There were all sorts of people who it couldn’t have been, but it was actually a wild mountain dog! He invited himself in and ate all the meat in the house and drank all the drinks with a hint of meat(!) [gravy and Bovril, I guess]. Then he started burping and wouldn’t stop, so Mummy and Daddy banished him from the house. The End!”.
