Hitchin Boys

I went to Hitchin Boys School yesterday to give a talk about my illustration work for a change. Tom Pitchford, the librarian there, had invited me back after I visited the school last year to talk about my writing. It was a pleasure to be back.

I decided that I would use the visit to experiment with PowerPoint and so made a little slide show of my work in advance and put it on a memory stick. Of course it didn't work.

To be fair, it was not the fault of PowerPoint. But because I was relying so heavily on technology, the glitches we had with the projector in the hall were pretty distracting. The IT people did get the thing working eventually and it worked fine for the second session. As frustrating as it was, I still came away thinking that this was definitely the way to go. Next time, though I would take my laptop instead of using a memory stick and thereby have that little bit more control over things.

Jail-breaker Jack

Many years ago - when I had just begun to write for children - I did an illustration job for Anne Clark when she was at Hodder (she is now at the Piccadilly Press). It was for a book by John and Mary Gribben called What's the Big Idea - Chaos and Uncertainty.

I got on very well with Anne - and it occurs to me now that I have not spoken to her in over two years - and when I dropped the illustrations off, we went for lunch. During our conversation she asked me if I had ever considered writing non-fiction for children. I said I had.

Anne is one of the very best editors I have worked with. She was very patient with me given that I had barely written anything before meeting her, and she taught me a lot. We went on to work together on two of my favourite and least successful books (in sales terms) to date (neither are in print). One was Witch Hunt, about the Salem witch trials; the other was Jail-breaker Jack about the notorious 18th Century thief and prison breaker, Jack Sheppard. Sheppard was arguably the most famous man in the world at one point - albeit postumously. He was like some bizarre cross between Ronnie Biggs and David Beckham.

Jail-breaker Jack was stuffed full of illustrations. Here are a few of them. Oh - and I did the curly lettering as well. . .

There was also a strip picture section when he makes his most famous escape from Newgate. This was not my idea - there was a print available shortly after the escape that uses a kind of strip form, and George Cruikshank used it as well when he illustrated William Harrison Ainsworth's novel Jack Sheppard

Tom Marlowe

I've been scanning in a load of things for a talk I'm giving tomorrow at Hitchin Boy's School. I think I'll share some of them with you over the next few days. Here are some chapter headings from my Tom Marlowe books for Random House. . .

Stuff

I was clearing out my office and found these. They are not exactly typical of my work. They were just some doodles with left over gouache. But I quite like them. . .

Now we are ten

I watched the last in the BBC4 Picture Book series. This last programme was about illustrated books for older children and it was probably the weakest of the three. It did not seem to know whether it was a programme about children's literature or illustration - as if a programme about illustrators would not quite be enough.

Ardizzone was in there again, this time for Stig of the Dump (see my earlier posting). Tom's Midnight Garden was also featured and Martin Salisbury gave a thoughtful and justifiably glowing assessment of Susan Einzig's lovely illustrations.

Philip Pullman's little illustrations at the beginning of the chapters in Northern Lights are superb I think. Author's illustrations are always fascinating, but often the skill level is fairly low. Pullman's pictures are very accomplished and sophisticated - more designs than illustrations perhaps, but incredibly evocative.


Neil Gaiman's collaborator, Dave McKean was featured too, but this time for a book with David Almond - The Savage. I like Dave McKean best when you can see the drawing, as you can in this book. It was good to see Shirley Hughes singing its praises.





Mervyn Peake cropped up as illustrator of Treasure Island and it must be said that his illustrations are superb. I was a little dubious about the amount of contributors who claimed to have a Peake illustrated copy of Treasure Island as children though. Was his version really that popular? But you can have your very own beautifully bound, hardback copy as an Everyman Classic.

Treasure Island - like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner that he likewise illustrated - is one of those books that each generation of illustrators has a stab at. Because it was a programme about British illustration, it didn't mention N C Wyeth's famous version, but it could have mentioned Rowland Hilder's or John Minton's. Instead we got Ralph Steadman, whose Treasure Island I always feel is the illustration equivalent of over-acting. Peake is the man to beat. No contest.

But seriously - no Charles Keeping? In programme about British illustrated literature for older children? No Victor Ambrus? Shame on you!

And shame too for getting Chris Riddell to appear in the series but not acknowledge his contribution as an illustrator. I cannot think of anyone else on that programme who did not get a chance to talk about their own work at some point. What a missed opportunity.

Dore's Dante

Whilst Dore's illustrations to Paradise Lost are wonderful, it was his illustrations to Dante I had meant to highlight. Getting my Infernos and my Pandemoniums mixed up.

And whilst I'm recommending Dover books, I'd also like to point you in the direction of the American illustrator Lynd Ward and his wordless novel. Ward illustrated Frankenstein, come to think of it, in the 1930s.

When we were six

I finally got round to watching the second in the BBC4 series Picture Book on BBC iPlayer. This one was entitled When We Were Six and it looked at books for that second stage of childhood - the illustrated chapter book. It's a fascinating series and hard to imagine being made by anyone but the BBC.

I enjoyed hearing Philip Pullman saying 'I don't like them myself' of The Chronicles of Narnia. That must be one of the great understatements of all time. It was nice to have C S Lewis's illustrator - Pauline Baynes - get some attention for a change. What lovely drawings they are. That lamp post in the snowy wood is iconic and is burned into the memory of a generation of adults who read those books as children.

The wonderful Edward Ardizzone was there too, though he was twice described as having a crosshatching technique made up of 'parallel lines' which is a bit of an oxymoron. It also seemed to give the impression that he had somehow invented this technique. He gave it his own particular spin, but crosshatching is a stock technique of copper plate engravers and etchers and artists had been doing it for centuries before Ardizzone ever picked up a pen. Piranesi crosshatched. Rembrandt crosshatched.

My good friend Chris Riddell was there, drawing Tenniel's rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Not quite sure what that was supposed to show us. Neither Chris nor Tenniel seemed to benefit from the exercise. I hope Chris is going to be featured in his own right on the next programme.

Michael Rosen's Sad Book was featured and what a book that is. I am a huge fan of Quentin Blake and he excels himself in this book. If anyone makes the mistake of thinking Blake's range is limited should look at the Sad Book. The drawing of Rosen feeling wretched and heartbroken is astonishing.

It was an incredibly brave thing of Rosen to do - to allow us all to share in his sadness at the death of his son. This is another book that could and should feature in any library for any age group. It is a high point of the British picture book.