The images stirred something deep in childhood - especially one delightful picture showing a little girl making a bed for her Teddy out of an old box. Perhaps this is because this is something we’ve all done, I suggest.
They also prompted memories of sitting down with my youngsters and looking at similar illustrations - pictures of babies and children at play, getting dressed - using a potty for the first time.
Lynn Breeze has an amazing talent of capturing childhood as it really is - with all its heart-warming simplicity. And this is what makes her book illustrations so charming, as well as true-to-life.
“Sometimes ideas do come from ordinary bits of life which can suddenly seem interesting,” she admits.
“For example if I was drawing a mug - I might make it a stripy one, like this,” she adds, tapping the one she has just filled with coffee.
We are chatting in Lynn’s lovely Hebden Bridge home - the top floor of which is a studio, high in the eaves, where the illustrations are painstakingly drawn and coloured.
This is where Lynn’s trademark images of gurgling babies, rosy-cheeked toddlers, bright play rugs, toys - and all the essential nursery elements, right down to the last cotton wool ball - are created.
Lynn has been a successful illustrator of children’s books for more than 20 years - a career which has grown out of a childhood passion.
“As a child I was always drawing,” reveals Lynn, who is originally from Wallasey, Merseyside.
“My dad was an engineer but he always used to make his own birthday cards and St Valentine cards and so on. He used to draw for me and then I would do the same. I wanted to draw all the time - even in class I remember drawing... when I shouldn’t have been,” she says, laughing.
Lynn grew up in Wales - first north and then south - before leaving for London and Kingston Art School, where she studied graphics.
She then moved to Suffolk where she had a few different jobs including working for an advertising agency.
“I was illustrating a little bit and then a wonderful job came up with East Anglian magazine. That was great training because I had to work to deadlines and that really speeded me up,” she says.
Then, through the magazine she met someone producing greetings cards and before long she was approached by an agent. Soon the freelance work was coming in thick and fast.
“I suddenly found that I was very busy. I had loads of work,” she recalls.
Lynn’s early work included illustrating story boards for TV’s successful children’s programme, Jackanory - the featured book was Alf Proysen’s well-loved Mrs Pepperpot - and even images for a Laura Ashley home-decorating book.
“On the train one day I met a friend and they said ‘why don’t you go to so and so’,” she recalls, before adding that she then approached a number of children’s book publishers.
Lynn, who has two daughters - Jo is 23 and Martha, 18, - has now illustrated books for a number of well-known children’s authors - including celebrity writers such as Breakfast TV presenter Lorraine Kelly.
She has also provided the illustrations for the famous Ladybird series and written and illustrated her own books.
Her latest set is a collection of four - My New Potty, My First Tooth, My Day Out and My New Baby - and all four are beautifully illustrated with bright drawings and written in catchy verse for youngsters and their parents to share.
Lynn is also the creator of a lovable baby called Pickle.
And as well as writing books for babies and children, she has also worked on a number of educational books for older readers.
“I tend not to think of a book as being for one age group only,” she says.
“You never know who a book will appeal to. I’ve done quite a few workshops with children and even with the younger books, you can find that older children enjoy them because they find something different from them. It goes the other way too, she adds.
“Lots of adults enjoy children’s books,” says Lynn, as she dashes into the next room to bring out a much-read, battered old copy of children’s verse, enjoyed by both her and her sister as youngsters.
She confesses that being a freelance, she does not work every single day - but is fairly disciplined when it comes to her illustrating.
“I like to get certain jobs done around the house before I settle down and I find that I like to work best at night,” she says.
“The idea is usually here,” she says, tapping the back of her head.
“And I’ll think about it for a while before actually getting started. Once I get going, I don’t like to stop and often it’s just me and the World Service for company late into the night.”
She adds that she believes she “couldn’t have a better job”.
“Well, here I am drawing pictures, drinking coffee and listening to Radio Four,” she laughs.
She is also working on some educational books for a Swedish publisher - “I am quite promiscuous” - and reveals that she would like to write more, possibly teenage fiction.
“I think really I would just love to enthuse people - whatever their age - about books,” she says.
An exhibition of Lynn’s original artwork will open at Milly’s, Burnley Road, Mytholmroyd, on November 22.