Synopsis

Thousands of young people have had some experience of puppetry - often rather brief, usually intensely enjoyable - at school. Mr. Pilpott's aim is to enable them to go on from there. As someone who devotes much of his waking life to puppetry, he brims with ideas; many of them his own, aquired in his work as a member of a very remarkable man and wife team: other drawn from his constant travelling from one puppet festival to another, in this country and abroad. 'Nobody', he says, 'can teach you puppetry.' This may be true: but there is a lot of teaching in Mr. Pilpott's book. It is all intensely practical: from the moment early on when he makes the reader aware of the physical skills involved in simply operating a puppet, through the vivid chapters on puppet-making, to the crowded, amusing, immensely helpful chapters on acting and characterisation.