ILLUSTRATORS – you just have to love them – DIANNE HOFMEYR

Bologna is a true celebration of illustrators... exhibitions everywhere of exciting work bursting with life, movement and expression, both from well-known illustrators and new emerging ones... and long queues everywhere of art students clutching massive portfolios, all waiting to see the art directors.

Ten days before Bologna, Roger Mello, 2014 Hans Christian Andersen winner from Brazil, and Piet Grobler of the International Centre for the Picture Book in Society fame, and their partners came to stay and for a few hours I saw the world through illustrators’ eyes. We sat above the sea on the Robberg Peninsula with icy wine in our glasses at sunset until it was dark. And the next morning what a pleasure to wake up and find Piet Grobler already working in the early African sunlight on my deck.

What undiluted energy! They were like boys let out of school. I was charmed by the quickness of ideas and the exuberance of their thinking as they brought the world alive. It struck me that this is exactly what illustrators do – they blow energy into the clay of a writer's story and make it come vibrantly to life.

Roger says he works from tins of wall paint... a first for me... because the colours are more immediate and vibrant. And vibrancy is what his work is about as these images from Maria Teresa show... an epic story steeped in fantasy, fiction and reality about the memories of a traditional carved figurehead, mounted on the prow of a vessel that ploughs the waters of the São Francisco river, and brings good luck to mariners while she collects the stories and dramatic fantasies of the river. Pity we don't see more of his work here in the UK. 

  

Piet Grobler works fast. In fact he's the fastest illustrator I've ever worked with. Without any emails going back and forth, his work suddenly appears in my Inbox utterly complete in 12 Spreads, blowing vitality and energy into my lifeless clay characters. Here are a few for our next book, Fiddle Dee Dee.

Carol Thompson is another fast worker. In her hands stories seemed to be teased out effortlessly into a coherent whole. With humour and the lightest of touch and quick sure line, suddenly a character springs from the page. Here's a glimpse into her studio and one with the artwork of My Daddy is a Silly Monkey lined up. Perhaps a penchant for turquiose if the dog, Coco's necktie (below) from a rough from our next book together is anything to go by?

Jane Ray is a master of colour and lay-out. Here's Jane in her studio and also a glimpse of her table while she was working on a Venetian illustration for The Glassmaker's Daughter. When I asked how she was going to manage a glass palace... her reply: we shall see when the time comes. The result is the glassiest of all glass palaces, blown into life by the delicate touch of Jane Ray. 

  

Jesse Hodgson too is a colourist of note... layering her pencil crayon strokes in such fine detail that I want to pick up a magnifying glass to see how she does it. A perfect creature emerges through the forest with all the tigeriness of a real tiger. I feel the sinuous energy, feel the tigery heat and smell the tigery breath in her work for Tiger Walk. 

At Bologna this year the honour of the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration given by IBBY, went to Russian illustrator Igor Oleynikov, who has illustrated a broad spectrum of stories including those of Russian masters Pushkin, Gogol, and Trotsky.

Just for whimsy and imagination, these two images below would be enough to make him a winner. I wish I'd been at Bologna to see his work in real life. 

Now Bologna is behind us and it’s time to stop dreaming and get back to work... but let's not forget all the great illustrators who give meaning to our words! And yes, we DO love you!

www.diannehofmeyr.com
Twitter: @dihofmeyr
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APRIL'S AUTHOR by Sharon Tregenza

Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen was born on 2nd April, 1805, in Odense, Denmark.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

                                       


 His father was a shoemaker and his mother a washerwoman. In an effort to escape his poor background, at the age of fourteen, he decided to try his luck in Copenhagen. For three years he lived in one of the cities most disreputable districts trying to become a singer, dancer or actor - bhe failed.

Andersen began his fairy-tale writing by retelling folk tales he'd heard as a child. It was his father's reading The Arabian Nights to him that had first sparked his interest in literature. Very soon, he began to create original stories. The first volumes in 1835-1837 contained nineteen tales and were called Fairy Tales Told for Children. Over the next few years, the title changed and more fairy tales were added. Among his most popular tales are: The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea, and The Little Mermaid.

Although Hans Christian learned to read, he couldn't spell properly and his handwritten texts were full of mistakes. His publishers corrected his errors but left his unique style. As a result his work remains close to the spoken word and still sounds fresh today.

Many of his stories have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets and animated films...

... although Disney and Pixar versions might horrify kids of today if they kept to Andersen's original endings. The Little Mermaid committed suicide, the Little Match Girl froze to death and The Steadfast Tin Soldier melted.

New York's Central Park is home to a statue of Hans Christian Andersen and The Ugly Duckling.

Five interesting facts about Hans Christian Andersen:

1. International Children's Book Day is held on April 2nd each year in honour of his birth date.

2. There is a statue of him at Rosenborg Castle Gardens in Copenhagen.

3. An award is given in his name to an author and illustrator for their contributions to children's literature.

4. Several movies have been made about his life including The Daydreamer (1966) and Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairytale (2003)

5. When he visited his friend Charles Dickens at his home he outstayed his welcome and was asked to leave. This ended the friendship. 



www.sharontregenza.com
sharontregenza@gmail.com

“Winter Is Coming”: Favourite Books for Long, Dark Nights by Emma Barnes

Not for children!

The days are dark; night creeps in early; there is frost in the air. 

I'm not a fan of winter. (I always get that frisson of dread whenever the Starks declare “Winter is Coming” in George RR Martin's Game of Thrones.  And I don't live anywhere near any Wildings.) Partly that's because British winters are grey and damp, rather than snowy and crisp. But while the reality of crawling out of bed on a dreary, dismal morning doesn't grab me, winter in children's fiction is a different thing.

Snow. Woods. Wolves. A crackling fire. Stark leafless trees. Shadows everywhere. This I enjoy.

Real life adventure

Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood, in a log cabin in the deep forest of Wisconsin, always gave me the same winter glow. There really is no better winter read than The Little House in the Big Woods. (Ma, bundled up against the cold, whacking a bear that she thinks is a cow. Pa playing the violin during the long nights. Christmas, when Laura receives her beloved rag doll, Charlotte.)

Unless, that is, you prefer The Long Winter, where the township is trapped by blizzards, the train lines closed, the Ingalls family are using a coffee mill to grind out their last handfuls of wheat and slowly everyone begins to starve...

Classic Fantasy

That sense of threat is also there in The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Ostensibly it's the fantasy “Dark” that is the danger, but much of the menace comes from the weather itself: the snow that falls and falls, the numbing cold, the village community that is slowly being cut off so that finally everyone has to take refuge in the old manor house.

I've always felt that Susan Cooper must have read another winter classic, The Box of Delights, as a child – for there are all kinds of echoes, most of all in the particular blend of English landscape and history, magical threat and snowy weather. Who can help a shudder of anticipation on reading that cryptic warning “The wolves are running...”

Urban snowscapes

Yet winter doesn't have to be about deep woods and rural landscapes. As a very small child, I was transfixed by Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day, which uses an urban setting to explore the feelings of fascination and wonder of a small child confronting something as amazing as SNOW. It's something about the simplicity and immediacy of this book that makes it so effective.

It brings home the fact that children's books still, often, ignore the urban landscape. The Snowy Day was, apparently, inspired by Keat's childhood neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. (It also has the distinction of being one of the first American children's books to feature a black lead character. That was in 1964. Decades later, diversity, or lack of it, is still a hot issue.)

Narnia

In general though, winter seems to be about magic, rather than real life, for children's authors. Maybe it's because it reasserts the power of nature – of snow, storms, the biting cold – in a way that makes us feel less sure of our human technology, more aware of the power of our natural surroundings. In the depths of winter, it is easier to believe in supernatural forces. Perhaps we feel less in control, more in touch with the past, more in need of help?

The excitement, magic and danger of winter is perhaps nowhere better expressed than in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When spring comes, it marks the beginning of hope and the end of the dark magic. And yet CS Lewis draws every drop of excitement from his winter setting: the fun of sledges, the terror of wolves, the wonderful warmth of hot chocolate or of snuggling in a fur coat. (Even if you don't approve of fur coats, you can still enter into the Pevensies' enjoyment of them.)

 Fairytales

This link between winter and magic seems so strong that it even percolates into adult literature. Most mainstream adult fiction keeps its distance from the magical, but the bestselling The Snow Child combines the setting of Alaska and a pioneering couple determined to make a life there (almost Laura Ingalls Wilder in its way) with a traditional fairytale fable, when they meet a child who seems strangely at home in the icy landscape, and surely possessed of magical powers.

A Russian folk tale is the inspiration for the story, and is just one of those included in the classic collection Old Peter's Book of Tales by Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome.

The Snow Queen, the most wintery of fairytales, is still going strong of course.

 And in case anybody doubted the combined power of fairytales, princesses and snow, Frozen is a recent reminder of their continuing appeal to the child's imagination. (Visiting schools for World Book Day, I've met  dozens of little “Elsas” and “Anas”.)

My Winter Tale

illustration by Emma Chichester Clark

Wolves, forests and fairytales were all at the back of my mind when I wrote my book Wolfie. Even though it is a contemporary story (with a helping of fantasy), about a girl called Lucie, and her adventures at home and school, as winter closes in the atmosphere becomes mysterious and magical.

The feeling I aimed to create is brilliantly evoked in this illustration by Emma Chichester Clark.

New Titles

Its fascinating to see that even in these days of central heating and cars chauffeured by mum and dad, where bad weather might seem just a passing annoyance to children glued to screens, winter has maintained its magic charm. The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell and Frost Hollow Hall  by Emma Carroll are two recent books which use winter – and its motifs of snow, woods, magic and wolves - to work their magic.


 I'm planning to curl up with one or other of them when the long, dark nights draw in.

What is your favourite winter read?








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Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever. (Cover - Jamie Littler)
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
(Cover: Emma Chichester Clark)
"Funny, clever and satisfying..." Books for Keeps

IBBY, Hans Christian Anderson Awards 2012 and Peter Sis

Awards, translations, migrations and a mix of people from 52 countries, were all part of the hectic week-end that comprised the International IBBY Conference hosted by IBBY UK here in London at the end of August.

There were too many absolutely brilliant workshops and talks to identify individually. UK authors and illustrators - Michael Rosen, Marcus Sedgewick, Michael Morourgo, Aiden Chambers and Anthony Browne were there but into the mix came other heady spice, texture and flavour from international experts in children’s literature and luminaries such as Shaun Tan, Peter Sis, Bart Moeyaert and Kitty Crowther, winner of the Astrid Lingen Award for Illustration.

Highlight of the week-end had to be the Hans Christian Andersen Ceremony with the Author award going to María Teresa Andruetto from Argentina and Illustrator award going to Peter Sis from the Czech Republic. I couldn’t help feeling that the venue of the Science Museum at night with its surreal spotlights was the perfect setting for Peter Sis’s drawings. The machines seem to take on a life of their own...

Some of the work of the short-listed illustrators and some IBBY Honour titles are shown below - exciting, unusual, different.  For more events and people see Candy Gourlay’s blog.

The fine linear work of Roger Mello from Brazil who was short-listed...,

The work of Alenka Sottler, an illustrator from Slovenia, depicting the story of Cinderella - Pepelka - with almost Seurat-like pointillism.

In Piroulito and Rosalia Effie Lada from Greece has speech impaired characters wearing beautiful masks and Eg Kan Ikkje Sove No (I Can't Sleep Now) shows the wonderful silhouetted work of Oyvind Torsetter from Norway... and lots more, snapped at random.

And finally I was delighted to meet Australian author, Mark Greenwood and his illustrator wife, Frane Lessac from Freemantle...

delighted to have Peter Sis sign my books...

and delighted to be in the heady atmosphere of such creative energy. Thank you IBBY UK for playing such excellent hosts.

www.diannehofmeyr.com
winner of two IBBY Honour Books (1994 and 2004)