It was while reading to her own children, she says, that the idea of authorship came to her. “I got very interested in children’s books, I still am. I began to think, ‘Perhaps I could do that?’ ”So in 1970 she wrote Astercote, about a deserted village in a wood that guards an ancient secret, the first of some 30 books for children that spanned her career until 2001. Just three years later came her Carnegie Medal, for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, a fantasy complete with poltergeist and 17th-century spook, which she still describes as her favourite among her own books.
via Penelope Lively: ‘Every writer I know is a hungry reader’ | Financial Times.
Burningham explains that they are their own best critics. “We depress each other more than we uplift. You work all week on something and it’s, ‘Oh my God, that foot is all wrong, it lacks colour!’ ” says Burningham. “I only bring work back [here] if there is a problem,” says Oxenbury. “I ask him, ‘What do you think is wrong?’ ”There is a pause. “You have a terrible problem with pretty ladies, don’t you?” says Oxenbury to her husband, a twinkle in her eye.“Do I?” says Burningham, archly.“They are dreadful. If he has a fairy to draw . . . they’re awful!”It’s hard to draw the beautiful, I offer, like a human Switzerland.
