children's & YA recommendations on the go
Judith Kerr, who died this week aged 95, shown above receiving BookTrust’s Lifetime Achievement Award…
Obituaries:
The Guardian
The Times
The Telegraph
The Independent
The Scotsman
The Herald – Scotland
Irish Times
Evening Standard
Daily Express
BBC
New York Times
Los Angeles Times
Boston Globe
Anthea Bell, the translator of Asterix, and seven-times winer of the Mildred L Batchelder award (for translated children’s fiction published in the US) has died aged 82.
Claire Armitstead’s obituary in The Guardian is an excellent information-packed summary of her career.
Other notable obituaries are also listed.
Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/18/anthea-bell-obituary
The Times – https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anthea-bell-obituary-zg3zq6vcz
Telegraph – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2018/10/19/anthea-bell-prolific-translator-whose-versions-asterix-series/
New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/obituaries/anthea-bell-dead.html
Vladimir Radunsky, an illustrator who used an abundance of artistic styles to create captivating children’s books about subjects including Albert Einstein, a rapping dog and a towering stalk of asparagus, died on Sept. 11 at a hospital near his home in Rome. He was 64.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/obituaries/vladimir-radunsky-dead.html
Other obituaries/death notices:
Publishers Weekly
John Cunliffe, the creator of the Postman Pat character and stories, has died.
Here are the obituaries:
Extract from Julia Eccleshare’s Guardian obit.
Published in 1963, like many other successes Stig of the Dump was turned down by a succession of publishers before Kaye Webb, then creating the Puffin list, bought it and published it handsomely in a paperback edition with illustrations and a now iconic cover by Edward Ardizzone. Reflecting in an interview in 2013, 50 years after the book’s publication, King opined that Stig was rejected by publishers because, even then, adults were anxious about children acting so entirely alone: “It was beginning to be rather improper to let a child run wild like that,” he said.
In the intervening years, adults’ views of children’s unsupervised outdoor play have become even more fraught with anxiety about possible risk; to the point where such play has almost disappeared.
Despite that, because it is a story that is both delightful and strong, and maybe because it is possible to think that Stig and his adventures with Barney are imagined rather than real, the book has endured and flourished in the intervening 55 years. Having been in print continuously with more than two million copies sold, it is on every list of modern classic children’s books, is a staple of primary school classrooms, was selected as the representative title for the 60s in Puffin’s list of The Puffins of Puffins, and has been adapted twice for TV.
Bob Bura, who has died aged 93, was one of Britain’s most prolific animators. Working with his long-time collaborator, John Hardwick, he produced hundreds of films and live-action puppet sequences. Through their pioneering techniques of stop-motion, they brought to life characters in classic children’s television programmes from the 1960s to 80s such as Camberwick Green, Trumpton, Chigley and Captain Pugwash… …
Independent Obit [2004] of colleague John Hardwick
Jill Barklem, who has died of pneumonia aged 66, was the creator of the Brambly Hedge children’s titles, a richly imagined and beautifully illustrated series of stories that are a fine example of the pastoral tradition in children’s books. Inspired by her observations of the countryside around Epping in Essex, where she grew up, Jill created the series on the underground as she commuted to her degree course at St Martin’s School of Art in central London. Hating the overcrowded trains, she transported herself to a place of her own imagining that offered peace, space and friendliness, populating it with a community of mice.
full obit >>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/29/jill-barklem-obituary
Pat Hutchins, who has died aged 75, was an award-winning illustrator and author, best known for her 1968 children’s book Rosie’s Walk. She created more than 40 picture books and short novels, all of which show her storytelling skills, her tremendous sense of humour and her warmth for children.
via Pat Hutchins obituary | Books | The Guardian.
other obits:
Telegraph
Publishers Weekly
Times
New York Times
also
Telegraph
Times
Washington Post
New York Times
The work of the Opies was key to my developing the interest in primary-aged children that led me to enrolling, in the mid-1970s, on a PGCE course to teach 5-9 yr olds. And for me one of the pleasures and privileges of the time I spent working in schools was being able to watch children at play in their various break times. I still miss that.
As these obituaries of Iona Opie, who long outlived her husband, make clear, the couple had an approach to their work which more resembled that of artists rather than scholars.
Both their combined work, and that of Iona Opie after Peter died, will be a treasure trove for decades (indeed, centuries) to come.
They slogged on. “We stayed home and plod, plod, plodded along.” The Opies wanted to do fieldwork among the juvenile tribes of Britain, about whom anthropologists knew nothing; they ignored claims that traditions were dead and recruited helpers to question children in 70 schools. The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959) revealed a complex, secret society with its “own code of oral legislation for testing, betting, swapping, keeping secrets”.
The tribes remembered from generation to generation a codex of knowledge, yet could speedily disseminate a joke nationwide. This society was unsentimental, anti-authoritarian, aware of the absurdity of adults. The book that recorded it – just before its customs were changing with the commodification of childhood – was on all the reading lists for the new subject of sociology in the 1960s.
On the Opies plodded, no car, no telly, interviewing thousands for Children’s Games in Street and Playground (1969) and filing folk fictions for The Classic Fairy Tales (1974); they also anthologised children’s verse.
Richard Wilbur, whose meticulous, urbane poems earned him two Pulitzer Prizes and selection as the national poet laureate, died on Saturday in Belmont, Mass. He was 96.
Wilbur’s poems have been reguarly included in children’s anthologies and on a few occasions – for example, The Spig In The Spigot – he published with a young audience directly in mind.
via Richard Wilbur, Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Winner, Dies at 96 – The New York Times.
See also:
Guardian Obituary
