'Talespin's' themes are growing up and the death of innocence, evoked via a series of collaged images which have been collated to create a fragmented narrative.

The black and white images were printed offset and then painstakingly hand-coloured by Susan Bee in watercolour and gouache to form a richly visual book. Bee built her collages using found images from a variety of sources, including nineteenth century ladies' magazines, nineteenth and early twentieth century children's books and computer clip-art.

Images, such as a pistol pointed at a rocking horse, are juxtaposed to develop a feeling of oddness and discomfort throughout the book. This sense of unease is mirrored by the text which appears on some pages, formed from collaged excerpts taken from books of children's verse, instructions in drawing manuals, captions from children's activity books and poems by Christina Rossetti and Robert Louis Stevenson. The blending of the lyrical innocence of the verse and the didactic tone of the drawing manual adds to the sinister undertone of the work.