WILD AT HEART – Dianne Hofmeyr

Last week, the Kings Road in Chelsea was abloom with wildness. Around every corner crocodiles crouched, cheetahs stalked, lions snarled and giraffes towered... all made from flowers, leaves and pampas grass. 

Last week too, the list of UK illustrators for the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava (BIB) for 2017 was announced at the IBBY AGM. Fifteen names in all. Congratulations all... with Laura Carlin's win in 2015, its great to see UK illustration making inroads.

Noticeably in many of the books – the natural world came through in total abundance. This connection to 'the wild' in picture books, is refreshing when more and more children are stuck in front of screens. I’ve chosen a few from the list – some for their sheer joy and others for the art teacher in me on the look-out for line, texture, form and colour. Here are some of my personal best ‘wild at heart’ ones in alphabetical order.

CHRISTOPHER CORR Deep in the Woods (Frances Lincoln, 2015)

WILLIAM GRILL The Wolves of Currampaw (Flying Eye, 2016)

EMILY HUGHES The Little Gardener (Flying Eye, 2015)

NEIL LAYTON The tree (Walker, 2016)

 JACKIE MORRIS One cheetah, one cherry (Otter-barry Books, 2016)

JACKIE MORRIS The quiet music of gently falling snow (Graffeg 2016)

JANE RAY The Little Mermaid (Boxer Books, 2014)

YUVAL ZOMMER The Big Book of Bugs (Thames and Hudson 2016)

YUVAL ZOMMER The Big Book of Beasts (Thames and Hudson 2017)

PS Thinking ‘Wild at Heart’? Anyone wanting to ‘monkey’ about on Father’s Day? Please join Carol Thompson and me at the Omnibus Theatre, Old Town Clapham with My Daddy is a Silly Monkey on Sunday 18 June, at 10.30 for some snarling tigers and gnashing crocodiles. Entrance is free and fathers are invited to join in and be celebrated! Suitable for children from 3 years upward.  If you can't make Clapham, a similar workshop is also on at The Alligator's Mouth in Richmond on Sat 10th at 11.30. 

The last word comes from a monkey seen in the Kings Road with a tummy of pincushion proteas. Join us for some 'wild at heart' fun on Father's Day.

www.diannehofmeyr.com

twitter: @dihofmeyr

PAPERWORK (otherwise known as decluttering) – Dianne Hofmeyr

This is not about the loads of paperwork we do every day but about scaling down. Getting rid of all the piles of paper from the past.

Decluttering has long been a buzzword and a recent book 'Goodbye Things' by Fumio Sasakia suggests all he needs is a bed, a table, his MacAir and a smart phone. Why keep paper? Why have books? You scan everything important to you and read books digitally.

Well yes, but you can only do that if your laptop is decluttered too. At the moment I only have 4GB of space because of my vast quantity of photographs and yes those can be stored in the iCloud, or on external drives and I do every so often, when big warnings flash up. But it still requires time and the will to declutter a laptop.

Last week my husband suggested I look through our store cupboard in the basement. We live in a 67 sq. metre flat so the store cupboard is vital… where else would I keep the ironing board, the vacuum cleaner and my extra stash of chocolate? It also houses boxes and boxes of old manuscripts neatly tied up and labelled with string and all the said research and reviews that go with each book.

I took down the first box and started ripping. It was the only copy I have of a novel I wrote in 1988 written on a typewriter (a word only a bit younger than gramophone) with pencil corrections and white tipex all over the onion skin pages, literally cut and pasted with cello-tape corrections. But undeterred it all went into the bin. Research. Reviews. Clippings. And text. This is not the same me. I’ve moved on.

It was going well. I hauled down the next box and there lay my very first novel together with a letter from my editor dated 25th May 1987 telling me they had printed 2500 copies of A Sudden Summer. What struck me was the date ... almost exactly 30 years ago to the month. A photograph lay across the letter taken of us on the day the novel came out. How young we both look and a bit uncanny that the girl on the cover seems to have the exact hairstyle I had then.

What struck me too was the editor's jaunty tone in her letter. 'May this be the first of many books for you. For you’ve got it, babe!' 

She’s to blame. If it weren’t for Dr Annari van der Merwe I wouldn’t still be writing books thirty years on. Thank you Annari for your patience. What an intricate and wonderful labyrinth you caused me to follow with your ball of string.

Well you’ve guessed it. Could I tear up this manuscript even more covered in tipex and tape? Not when scrawled across the first page, she had also written… Keep this under lock and key. One day you will be able to sell it to the University of Texas in Austin for a grand sum. Not so! But still I slipped the crinkly onion skin paper back into the box and locked the door to the storeroom and all the book memories for yet another day.

In two days time, thirty years on, and I’m not sure how many books later, I have a very different one coming out – a picture book, My Daddy is a Silly Monkey, for very young readers. It’s come full circle. The same publisher, Tafelberg, who trusted me with my first novel has bought the South African Rights. It’s a book about the chaotic yet wonderful relationship between a busy father and a daughter that I saw emerge between my own son and his daughter at time when he was juggling his complicated life. Carol Thompson’s illustrations explode with energy and humour and thanks to Janetta Otter-barry and her team, the book will come into the world this week on 4th May 2017 just 3 weeks short of my thirty year entrance into the world of writing.

 

 

No doubt in years to come, I will sit in the same storeroom looking at yet another box of papers … my hands willing but my spirit weak. 

Clutter… the English psychoanalyst and design teacher Jane Graves wrote in ‘The Secret Life of Objects’ is always about memory, so therefore about emotion and sentiment. Tidying, then, is intimate work. 

If this is only my paperwork attempt, what about the objects? Get rid of multiples... says Fumio Sasakio. Four pairs of scissors is too many. You only need one that works and you will always know where it is.  Hmmm... if only.

www.diannehofmeyr.com
Twitter: @dihofmeyr
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OFF TO THE FAIRS

 

It’s not often a picture book text is effortlessly written. Usually one plucks and pulls and dithers beween using this word or that. But when an idea comes so thoroughly from the heart as my last story did… what a pleasure to write.

My Daddy is a Silly Monkey is off to both the London Book Fair and Bologna in hardback under the Otter-Barry Books imprint and has sold foreign rights in Spain, Denmark and South Africa. Forgive the indulgence of a bit of self promotion but new books need to be celebrated!

It’s great to be in Janetta’s stable and to benefit from her innate instinct on what is right for a text for younger children. With a totally hands-on approach, she encouraged Carol Thompson, my amazing illustrator, and me to be very free and collaborative with ideas. I think it shows in both the fresh illustration and the free-wheeling text with a font to match. The energy is all there – not trapped between the covers but extending beyond the cover with it’s image of a girl swinging out on a monkey’s tail.

For the first time ever I based a text loosely on a family member. It’s about a little girl trying to manage her chaotic but highly inventive father. Divorce is never easy and I wanted the story to convey the fun and playfulness when an ill-equipped father tries to cope in a single parent situation. Carol’s illustration is spot on. The love shines through.

As a parent I was forever curtailing what I saw as dangerous – don’t swing on that branch – don’t climb so high – don’t bounce so wildly. But here is a daddy who encourages a little wild behaviour, told from the girl’s point of view with scepticism as well as trust in what he attempts to do.

In the end, it’s essentially a story about love – and that love will survive whatever the chaos. I hope My Daddy is a Silly Monkey will fly high at both Fairs and that daddies the world over will continue to be silly monkeys with their children.

The 'Daddy's Cheeky Monkey' T-shirt that inspired the title. 

Matching hairbands

At the end of the day...

diannehofmeyr@btinternet.com

Twitter: @dihofmeyr