“When you listen to a story do you see pictures? When you see a picture, do you think of a story?”

These are the words on the wall as you enter the Imagine exhibition at the gloriously refurbished Manchester Art Gallery, but you don’t have to be able to read to make sense of this engagingly interactive exhibition.

Mounted in collaboration with Barefoot Books and aimed principally at a family audience, this exhibition of original picture book art explores the subtle relationship between art, story and the imagination.

But even as you enter there are signs that this show is not just about listening, seeing and imagining - it’s also very much about doing.

Barefoot Books is renowned not just for its cross-cultural approach to storytelling, but also for a wide range of artistic expression that brings in artists from around the world. The techniques and media here include painting, drawing and collage - all techniques children can relate to.

nbsp;“Children deserve the highest quality artwork,” says Tessa Strickland of Barefoot. “Even babies have powers of discrimination.”

Given the abundance of books to choose from, the exhibits have been selected with admirable restraint, so there are just 24 carefully chosen pieces.

nbsp;The low level at which they are hung makes them easily accessible to young viewers, and brings to the room an intimacy that is emphasised by the cushions strewn across the floor, where children can sit and read the books.

To one side is a giant red plush armchair - even a large adult would feel small in it - symbolising, perhaps, the magic that occurs when you curl up and lose yourself in a book.

At the Ashmolean Museum the exhibition of Shirley Hughes’s work “with Alfie, Dogger and friends” is a rather more formal affair - but only in its presentation.

There’s certainly nothing formal about Alfie, Lucy, Tom or any of the children Hughes draws in her incomparable naturalistic style.

Her remarkable career goes back a long way - as she points out, in real life Lucy and Tom would now be in their forties - and one of the joys of this show is to see the original artwork.

But among the most exciting exhibits, displayed alongside the elderly and rather desiccated Dogger toy, are the sketchbooks.

Shirley Hughes has a lifelong sketchbook habit. If you know her books, it’s fascinating to see how the illustrations progress from the vigour of the first lightning sketches.

The sketchbooks are much more than a useful tool, with drawings from her travels in Italy, cherubs, churches, girls tottering in high heels, scenes in London parks, people on benches, trees, passing strangers, family likenesses.

It’s clear that for Hughes drawing is simply second nature, a passion, a way of life.

• Imagine is at Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester, until January 12, 2003. Tel 0161 235 8893 or go to www.manchestergalleries.org . For details of teachers’ sessions during October (including one with author Jatinder Verma on Divaali: story and celebration on October 12) contact Morrigan Ellis on 0161 235 8842.
• Shirley Hughes with Alfie, Dogger and Friends is at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, until January 26, 2003. For further information, tel: 01865 278015. A free exhibition guide includes a trail of activities for children.
• To read this review, and others, in full see this week’s edition of Friday magazine, free with the TES.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;