When my son was small, he and my dad liked to read Mem Fox’s 1984 picture book Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge.
The book, which was illustrated by Julie Vivas and is competing in Guardian Australia’s reader poll of the best Australian children’s picture book of all time, is about a boy called Wilfrid climbing through the fence to visit the aged care home next door. He meets many interesting people there, including Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, who had four names like Wilfrid, but who, according to Wilfrid’s parents, had “lost her memory”.
