Author(s): Stefan Themerson

Picture Books

"The Table that Ran Away to the Woods" tells the tale of a writing desk that one day 'grabbed two pairs of shoes/ran downstairs, and took flight', escaping into the countryside with its owners in barefoot pursuit. This is the first time the story - first published in a Polish newspaper in 1940 and recreated in this exquisite collaged version in 1963 - has been made available to an English-speaking audience. Franciszka and Stefan Themerson were Polish avant-garde artists and filmmakers who arrived as refugees in London, she in 1940, he in 1942, and who continued to work on a huge range of creative projects in England. With her unique illustrations, and his deceptively simple, humorous stories, they created many successful children's books together. Lovingly republished, this will be an opportunity for a new audience to escape into a book, which, as Wadely says in his introductory note, 'has all the innocence of a child's song, as the table dances back to nature, and the liberated typography floats across the page'.