A Book Lover's Christmas: A Jigsaw Puzzle by Michael Kirkham

A Place for Literature is a series of illustrated jigsaws. Published by Laurence King, each depicts multiple literary works within one continuous world. This concept was conceived by Kirkham and pitched to the publisher in January 2023. The first jigsaw was published in September 2024, with the second scheduled for Spring 2026 and a further under discussion. 

The aim of the research was to make reading and literature vibrant and appealing to a popular audience utilising Kirkham’s long-term interest in combining contrasting pictorial-depth conventions to create pictures with multiple centres. The jigsaw form was considered ideal as it offers a large picture format, requires close inspection by the audience and is often bought as a gift, thereby enabling further transmission of the research outcomes. The Place for Literature jigsaws are distinct from previous works in that the subject is gathered by theme rather than author or story and utilises a dynamic and eclectic approach to pictorial depth. 

Memorable scenes from relevant literary works were pictorialised through iterative sketching and referencing.  Technical challenges included establishing how to clearly depict at many individual happenings at a large scale within a continuous setting and how to give the image sufficient visual interest to reward close and sustained interaction (a prerequisite of the jigsaw form). 

The first jigsaw in the series, A Book Lover’s Christmas sold approximately 30,000 copies across the UK and USA in its first Christmas. It is stocked in booksellers such as Waterstones and John Lewis in the UK and was instrumental in the publisher achieving a prominent sales position for their jigsaws in Barnes & Noble stores in the USA. The development work was presented as an open educational resource on Discovery for the benefit of students and practitioners.