We are excited to welcome Alison Brumwell, Chair of the Youth Libraries Group, to reflect on the work of illustrator Jon Agee, whose The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau publishes today (4 February 2021).  

One of my personal highlights of In the Frame: Putting Readers in the Picture, YLG’s virtual conference in November 2020, was the opportunity to host a live Q & A session with acclaimed U.S. author and illustrator Jon Agee from his home base in San Francisco. While I have admired Jon’s work for several years - and he has won several awards during his substantial career - he has been less well-known in the UK until recently, courtesy of independent publisher Scallywag Press.

Scallywag Press, founded in 2018 by Sarah Pakenham, has introduced five of Jon Agee’s works to UK readers, including the publication of The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau. This witty, inventive picture book was originally published in 1988 and was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Children’s Book of the Year. It features Jon’s trademark visual humour and word play, with the reader definitely privy to the joke and able to fully interact with the narrative. As Sarah says, “[Jon’s] is masterful storytelling with very simple words and pictures, full of the surreal, the hilarious and the poignant.”

I first encountered the magic and artistry of Jon Agee at Mabel’s Fables, an independent bookseller in Toronto, and was immediately hooked by his humour, sense of the absurd and impeccable visual timing. Art has always been a central part of Jon’s life; as a young student he loved drawing cartoons and comic strips and was heavily influenced by the English illustrator and poet Edward Lear. This passion is clearly evident in his books for children. He has an ability to convey emotion and cleverly pace his stories through drawing clear, bold lines. There’s also a very clever use of comic book layout (the panels, spotlight effect and speech bubbles in Lion Lessons are one example of this). 

Sarah’s own relationship with Jon’s books began when she met Charlene Lai, a Taiwanese bookseller and blogger, who had invited Jon to the Taipei BookFair. After investigating them all, Sarah says “each was more of a delight than the last!” As only two of Jon’s picture books had ever been published in the UK (coincidentally by Sarah’s editor, Janice Thompson, who was Children’s Book Editor at Faber in the 1980’s) she soon acquired the rights to Lion Lessons and made an offer on The Wall in the Middle of the Book on the basis of a half-finished book. In the latter, there is an inventive exploration of the fourth wall – the space which separates Jon’s characters from their reader – and a strong sense of the three-dimensional, which is what also makes Felix Clousseau such a timeless, remarkable picture book. The reader is in the front row of the audience, watching the narrative unfold and experiencing a thoroughly satisfying (if unexpected) ending. A twist to the tale is something at which Jon Agee excels!

Prior to interviewing Jon last year, I re-read American writer Paul Auster’s novel The Book of Illusions, in which he describes one of his character’s silent film performances: “It wasn’t slapstick and anarchy so much as character and pace, a smoothly orchestrated mixture of objects, bodies and minds.” The same could be said of Jon Agee, which is what makes him such a remarkable writer and illustrator. His illustrated narratives are entertaining, nuanced and perfectly balanced, with a visual challenge in every spread.

Thank you to Alison Brumwell for the blog.  Why not check out the YLG interview with Jon Agee here?

We are delighted and extremely excited to welcome Shirley Hughes to the blog.  Shirley was the winner of the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for Dogger.  This also won the Greenaway of Greenaways during the award’s anniversary celebrations.  To celebrate the publication of the book’s sequel Dogger’s Christmas, we were delighted to have the opportunity to interview Shirley Hughes.

As well as being a hugely talented, multi-award winning author-illustrator, Shirley is also a great friend and champion of libraries.  She was selected as a guest editor for BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour and specifically asked for one of the topics during her show to be ‘Libraries’.  2020 marks the 60^th anniversary of Shirley Hughes’ first published book, Lucy and Tom’s Day.  To escape into or just enjoy a different one of Shirley’s remarkable books, follow her on Twitter @ShirleyHughes_

Please can you tell us how you first began working in illustration?

Aged 17 I studied fashion and dress design at Liverpool Art School, my favourite part of the course was fashion drawing. After just over a year I moved on to the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford. There was no design or illustration tuition at the Ruskin, a tutor called Jack Townend taught lithography. It was he who suggested I might like to try some book illustration. In my final year in Oxford I concentrated on graphic work, using pen and ink, watercolour and gouache. I made a tiny amount of cash drawing adverts of ladies’ underwear for a department store on the High Street. Meanwhile I took my first job hand colouring line illustrations in an edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. As I graduated Barnet Freedman, a revered illustrator, tutor, war artist and commercial artist, told me he’d consider introducing me to some publishers in London if I was serious about trying to make my way as an illustrator. This he kindly did. My first commission for a book came with a story by Olivia Fitz Roy, The Hill War and this gradually led to more work until in 1960 my first picture book was published, Lucy and Tom’s Day (Victor Gollancz).

There’s a deceptive simplicity in the way your work ‘shows’ stories unfolding and character’s emotions and motivations progressing.  In your view, what makes for a successful way of showing a story through illustration?

The text must leave space for the illustrations in two ways; firstly, physical space so that you consider where the text will be placed as you create your illustrations, but then also more loosely. The words can convey one story, whilst the drawings show something slightly different. You want to give the reader and the child things to talk about, so the child can be spotting something the illustrations reveal but the text doesn’t, that way the child is ahead of the adult.

Dogger won the Kate Greenaway Medal and in 2007 went on to be voted as the Greenaway of Greenaways by the public, what kind of impact did this recognition have on your career?

Winning the Kate Greenaway Medal for Dogger meant so very much to me. To have my work recognised by esteemed librarians was quite something. So many distinguished illustrators, whose work I so admire, had won the medal before me. The award almost coincided with my entry into the USA, and Dogger’s ongoing success led to more of my books being published there and internationally. I will never know if the Medal had any sway over the American publisher, I am pretty sure it did. It gave me such a fillip; it was a boost to my creativity and gave me a true incentive to keep going.

To be voted the Greenaway of Greenaways was an enormous honour, and I am very grateful to all those who have shared the story at home, in schools and in libraries and who came out to vote for me and Dogger. It's hugely rewarding to have created books that receive the ultimate recognition like this. Thank you.

As well as creating your own books, you’ve collaborated with some incredible names in children’s literature, Noel Streatfeild, Dorothy Edwards, Margaret Mahy… what would you say are the differences between illustrating another’s person’s text and your own and do you have a preference?

I sometimes think of my time spent illustrating authors’ work as an apprenticeship. Often I’d be asked to create a cover and say twenty line drawings. This kind of apprenticeship is so hard to come by nowadays for emerging illustrators. When it comes to visual characterisation an illustrator is best left to their own imagination, with the less interjections from the author the better really once you get going. The sparser the text the more my imagination reins free. It is slightly uncanny when you find out later that you have drawn somebody who looks like the author, or one of their relatives…

When I look back I think my biggest break of all came from working with Dorothy Edwards. I was very familiar with her My Naughty Little Sister stories; I’d read them bedtime after bedtime to my own children. However tired I was, Dorothy’s books were always a pleasure to read.  Dorothy’s first collections of stories were originally illustrated by three different artists. In 1968 I was commissioned by Methuen to illustrate When My Naughty Little Sister Was Good, and Dorothy was so pleased with how they looked that she asked that I re-illustrate all of her stories.  When the two of us finally met there was an immediate rapport. She told me numerous tales of her own childhood. She, of course, was the Naughty Little Sister. I learned a very great deal from Dorothy, not least how to address and entertain a young audience.

I had almost no contact with Margaret Mahy. I was in London and she was in New Zealand. But vivid pictures flow from her descriptions and every sentence she wrote.

I was fortunate to be asked to work with Noel Streatfeild, then at the height of her powers. She had spotted one of my illustrations, and asked her publisher Collins, if I might work on her new book The Bell Family.

It was such fun to work with my daughter, the author illustrator Clara Vulliamy, for our Dixie O’Day series. We dreamt up the stories about two chums Dixie and Percy and their adventures behind the wheel. For the first time in my life I handed over the reins for the illustrations and Clara did the drawings, with me writing the stories. With Dixie O'Day I was especially thinking about the emergent reader who enjoyed picture books but was moving into the challenge of longer text, and needs a lot of inspiration from illustrations to carry them along.

The return to Dave, Dogger and family feels so natural and seamless.  The book is an absolute classic, how did it feel to be returning to these characters and were there any challenges given how well loved Dogger is?

I’d been wanting to do another Christmas story, but it took a while for the right idea to form in my head. I thought and thought, and mulled and mulled, and then Dogger’s Christmas took flight. The simplicity of a picture book is misleading: they can take a long time to come together. The real Dogger is so vivid in my imagination I could draw him in my sleep now. It has been like meeting up again with a very old friend.

You’ve worked across so many different age-groups (from nursery upwards) and across a huge variety of forms – picture books, short stories, poetry, graphic novels.  Do you have a preferred age-group or form and do you consciously seek to challenge yourself?

My favourite audience has to be the child on the cusp of or just embarked upon school, who’s just beginning to get excited about books.

Through my career I feel I have taken on several challenges. I took on a new one in Enchantment in the Garden. I wanted to create a longer story, which might appeal to boys as well as girls, but wanted to combine text, line drawing and colour art work. I used a panel to the side of the page for the text which then left me plenty of space to explore with my colour illustrations. I used this format again with The Lion and the Unicorn, and Ella’s Big Chance. I suppose with these books I was recalling those illustrators like Heath Robinson and Arthur Rackham, whose gift books I had so enjoyed in my own childhood. I turned to longer fiction, firstly with Hero on a Bicycle and then Whistling in the Dark, following my husband’s death. I wrote at the weekends and filled my time with those longer stories whilst I worked on my colour books in the week.

On the subject of challenge, you won a second Kate Greenaway medal with Ella’s Big Chance a jazz inspired reimagining of Cinderella, how much research was involved with creating such an immersive period piece?

I wanted to set the book, with all of its dancing scenes, ballrooms and splendour, in the 1920s when dancing was coming into vogue, with dancers shimmying about, with the quick step, the two step, the Charleston. I learned so much about how fabric drapes, how it covers and moves with the figure from my time at Liverpool Art School. We studied the history of costume there too, so useful when it came to illustrating my fairy tale retelling Ella’s Big Chance. The dresses are all my designs, inspired by the great French couturiers of the 1920s such as Doucet, Poiret and Patou; and the ballroom scenes inspired by the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies.

Please can you talk us through your approach to creating a book?

I draw out my books first in rough, taking the story from double-page spread to spread. One of the toughest challenges is then to translate the vitality of the rough, which is done at great speed with a B pencil, into the finished artwork, which, of course is done at a much slower and more meticulous pace. There is nothing more exciting than starting work; sharpening pencils and squeezing out my paints on to the palette. I use gouache colour, which is water-based but has a lot more body than watercolour, so you can cover up mistakes. I begin with Vandyke Brown, getting the details in place and the figures established – paying particular attention to gestures and expressions, which carry so much of the story – before adding local colour. I sometimes use oil pastels too, especially for landscapes and skies where I can be more free and impressionistic.

Which books and artists do you admire and how have these influenced your work?

I feel I have learned from so many greats to have gone before me. If I had to choose just one, it would be Edward Ardizzone. An author, illustrator and distinguished war artist, remarkably he was almost entirely self-taught. His figures, so touching in back view, are instantly recognisable. He had a perfect sense of tone, and with a few scratched lines could tell you exactly what he wanted you to see.

Thinking of contemporary artists, I greatly admire Posy Simmonds for her humour and her line work, Raymond Briggs who is a simply wonderful artist, Anthony Browne and Chris Riddell for his political cartoons.

Family is hugely important in your books, what do your own think of your work and do they have any particular favourites among your books?

My own family are my most loyal readers – it’s very important to me to have their good opinion of my books. Ed is drawn to my longer stories, such as Enchantment in the Garden and The Lion and the Unicorn. Tom has a soft spot for The Nursery Collection, published by Walker Books (Bathwater’s Hot, Colours, Noisy among others), as they remind him of when his own children were small. Clara, because she is an author illustrator too, always says that her favourite is the one on my drawing board at any given time – I show her my works in progress and we bounce ideas around, which is a huge pleasure.

Shirley Hughes, November 2020.


A huge thank you to Shirley Hughes for her generosity in sharing so much of her time and expertise with this interview and to Clare Hall-Craggs for the opportunity.

We are delighted to welcome Nicky Thomas-Davies, Board Game Sales and Marketing Manager for Kosmos Games for a special blog looking at the production of The Lost Words card game adapted from the 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal winning book by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris. The game makes an ideal activity for reading and shadowing groups.

The Lost Words is a book that is instantly recognisable to thousands of people. It has touched the hearts and minds of a generation, being a staple of library groups, schools and coffee tables around the globe.

Having seen the amazing artwork by Jackie Morris and read the magical spells of Robert Macfarlane, we at Kosmos Games UK knew that this would make an amazing card game and were thrilled when Robert Hyde of Sophisticated Games, who is also the author of the game, approached us with a prototype.

Even though Kosmos have published hundreds of games over the years, every now and again a really special one stands out, and for me this was one of those games. 

Lots of our games are visually very appealing but The Lost Words looks very different to any of our other games. Whilst we are not all about dragons and castles, we do have a lot of fantasy in our board game world!

Our shelves are actually lined with everything from a 90s Pop Art game (Out of this World) to Astronauts (The Crew) to a game about Silkworm farmers (Silk)! The Lost Words is our first game about British flora and fauna. It has brambles and kingfishers and otters and, perhaps because Kosmos Games UK is based deep in the countryside of the Weald of Kent, these images speak to us on a very personal level.

So how does the game work?   It is what we call a Gateway Game as it is easy to learn and appealing to both gamers and non-gamers alike. It can be played with 2 – 4 players from around the age of 8. In a 4-player game, each player is given 4 nature cards (picture cards) and is dealt 3 cards from the centre pile.  This pile contains a mix of spell cards and action cards.

The aim of the game is to pair all of your nature cards with spell (poem) cards. You may be thwarted in your quest by action cards played by your opponents -they may steal one of your sets or send them to the discard pile. Luckily you may be dealt the ‘Wall’ or the ‘Wild One’ card to protect your card pairs from the opponents thieving magpies or card dipping kingfishers! It is a game that is equally educational, beautiful and fun to play.

When artist Jackie Morris was awarded the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal in 2019, she said “At the heart of our book was a desire to refocus the minds, eyes, hearts of children on the awesome, glorious beauty of the natural world of which humans are but a tiny part.”

Our hope is that the card game will help to spread the joy of our native wildlife to an audience that may not have seen the book before. While the game is easy enough for non-gaming families to learn, it is strategic enough to entice the gaming community to want to play. The game was also designed with special large size playing cards to full do justice to the artwork. It was printed on very high quality ‘linen finish’ card stock by one of the oldest and most prestigious card game manufacturers in Europe, in Altenburg, Germany. Amazingly they have been printing cards there since 1872.

Rob Macfarlane once said “We want this book to conjure back the common words and species that are steadily disappearing from everyday life - and especially from children’s stories and dreams”.   Both Rob and Jackie are delighted with the card game, which they feel is completely true to the spirit of the book. The graphic design of the game was mastered by the hugely talented Alison O’Toole - who designed both The Lost Words and The Lost Spells books.

Distributing a game that can bring these magical lost words and images into the world of play, where children learn best, can only be a good thing as far as we at Kosmos are concerned.

Sophisticated Games and Kosmos hope that the card game will provide many hours of discovery and fun for families all over the country.

A huge thank you to Nicky Thomas-Davies for providing this creative insight into The Lost Words card games, we look forward to playing!

Continuing our Libraries in the Picture feature for Libraries Week, we are extremely excited to welcome illustrator Rikin Parekh to the blog.  Rikin's work is characterised by a whimsical and energetic line.  Rikin has an impressive list of publications and has illustrated James Bishop's Iguana Boy books, Emma Perry's This Book has Alpacas and Bears, Konnie Huq's Fearless Fairy Tales and Joanna Nadin's The Worst Class in the World.  Rikin has also written an illustrated the picturebook Fly, Tiger, Fly!

Can you introduce yourself – a little about your work and technique?

My work tends to drawn towards animals, colour and expressions which I find really intriguing. I use a dip pen and a brush to ink my illustrations and use watercolours, acrylics and colouring pencils to colour in my work. All this done to the sounds of either a film soundtrack or Jimi Hendrix! 

This year’s Libraries Week is themed around books and reading, can you tell us about some of the books you enjoyed as a child and why these connected with you?

The late, great Judith Kerr's The Tiger Who Came to Tea was one of the first picture books I remember reading. It filled me with so much joy, excitement and wonder, reading and seeing a tiger coming to someone's house and having fun! That sense of wonder and joy coupled with the amazing illustrations inspired me and continues to do so. 

What do you feel is important about libraries?

I feel libraries are not just important but a lifeblood for the community. It's where children can go and check into new worlds, meet new characters, become inspired by word and colour, feed their hunger for knowledge and see the importance of learning. It's where people can come and find answers. I love my local library, I remember going there many times whilst at school, loaning books out, just becoming mesmerized by how much knowledge there was and why I couldn't just take it all in! 

Can you share details of one of your favourite libraries – this could be a school library or a public library?

I think it would have to be the library at my old high school, Preston Manor High in Wembley. It was here that I learnt how to use the internet, how my friends and I would seek refuge there when it rained outside and we'd discover the beauty of books. It was briefly shut as it was being refurbished but when it opened, during the late 90's when I was there, it was SO cool! We had new seating areas, Mac computers, PC's, new furniture, NEW BOOKS! I loved going there during my empty periods and drawing in the learning booths, it felt like my studio and I had any reference books at an arm's length. 

Can you tell us anything about your next book?

I have a couple and a few picture book manuscripts I've submitted to my agent. That's about all I can say right now! 

Thank you so much to Rikin for a brilliant interview and for his amazing library inspired doodle!

We are delighted to welcome illustrator Diane Ewen to the blog during Libraries Week.  Diane was born in Walsall in the West Midlands and has a life-long love of art.  Diane graduated from the University of Wolverhampton with a B.A. Honours degree in illustration.  Diane creates illustrations that are hand-drawn in pencil before painting with watercolour and acrylics.  These are then embellished using Photoshop.  Dinae also enjoys creating designs digitally and constantly develops her style as she progresses. 

Diane loves the fact that illustrations are the first elements of a book to entice the reader to engage.  She is inspired by the use of vibrant colour.  The first book Diane illustrated was Pretty Poodle Parlour by Angela McAllister.  Diane has also illustrated Rashmi Sirdeshpande's Never Show a T-Rex a Book!  a brilliant celebration of libraries, books and reading!  Diane has also created the illustrations for a picturebook version of Floella Benjamin's Coming to England.

We are tremendously grateful to Diane for creating and allowing us to share some special library illustrations which she has created!  Thank you to Diane Ewen, to Penguin Random House for the support and to Rashmi Sirdeshpande for her brilliant book!