ARTIST Rose Garrard has just published a children’s book of watercolours created by her father when she was very young.

In 1948, serving army officer and artist Colonel Walter Garrard, who was stationed in Egypt, made an ABC book for his daughter Rose’s second birthday.

Colonel Garrard was keen that his daughter should develop good observational skills by looking carefully at the images, so no key to the pictures was provided.

His idea must have worked as Rose grew up to become a successful professional art-ist who returned to Malvern to create the water features on Belle Vue Terrace.

However, the book was later forgotten and lost until it was rediscovered in a box in an attic 60 years later.

Rose took it to show Aspect Design in Newtown Road, Malvern, which specialises in books by local authors. The firm felt it should be published to bring a colourful reminder of times past to children learning their alphabets today.

To go alongside the pictures, Rose invented tongue twisters to give fun clues to help children ‘see’ most, but not all, of the symbols in the pictures.

The clues can be read aloud by parents to help children name some of the objects in the paintings.

Discover ABC has now been published in time for Christmas and is available from Little Me, Beacon Books, Aquarius and Aspect Design, for £7.99.