Dick King-Smith

Dick King-Smith (Ronald Gordon King-Smith), writer, born 27 March 1922; died 4 January 2011

Dick King-Smith did not become a published author until he was into his 50s

Dick King-Smith, who has died aged 88, was one of the most delightful of children’s authors, from one of the most unlikely backgrounds.

Enormously successful and popular – especially with The Sheep-Pig (1983), which was adapted into film in 1995 as Babe – he came to writing for children late in life, after two previous careers, in both of which he always claimed to have been a complete failure.

Farmer, teacher, writer – Dick’s life can be carved up into three neat but certainly not equal slices. Farming was his first love, but his lack of business sense, and particularly a disregard for numbers, forced him to abandon this career after 20 years of running a couple of farms at a loss.

His second, as a teacher, was also hampered by his relationship with numbers. He was moved from teaching juniors to infants because he could not manage long division. In his third career, the only numbers that mattered were his prodigious output – more than 100 titles – and his enormous sales figures, somewhere around 15m copies worldwide.

Dick was every inch a country gentleman, and no amount of sophisticated London publishing events changed that. He was delightfully old-fashioned, without being in the least an old fogey, and had disarmingly good manners – products of his comfortable gentry background in the West Country, where his family ran several paper mills, and education at Marlborough College in Wiltshire. Even when older and lamer, he had the upright posture of a Grenadier Guard. He served with that regiment in Italy with distinction during the Second World War, was wounded and invalided out.

He had an optimistic temperament, as well as an upper-class knack of understatement, coming from a world in which what he called “luck” – meaning having a cousin who offers to pay all remaining school fees and a friend who offers to pay off the mortgage – played a significant role.

However, Dick’s enormous success as a writer cannot be put down to luck. Although he did not begin to publish successfully until he was in his 50s, as he began to struggle as a teacher, he had been writing for far longer. Individual poems were published in the Field in the 1950s and 1960s, and Punch published Alphabeasts, a collection of poems about animals, as a centre-page spread, with illustrations by Quentin Blake. (It was subsequently published as a book in 1990.) Even when he was not writing, Dick made up ditties and songs about his everyday activities, which he sang around the house as he did them.

The other spur to his writing came from even further back – his childhood love of animals, which he described in his autobiography, Chewing the Cud (2001): “As a child I had pets – rabbits, tortoises, rats, mice – and a toy farm which I played with endlessly. It was a pretty eccentric collection. I never minded much what went with what, so I included a giraffe among the dairy herd, but it absorbed me completely. I ran my farm in much the same way. I had animals that I liked. Now I see that it was rather a stupid way to run a farm, but at the time I felt I didn’t have to conform.”

As Dick’s first farm was owned by his father’s paper-mill company, which wanted it only to supply the canteen with eggs and milk, there was no immediate need to worry about profitability, but tougher times later forced him to abandon it. Dick gathered around him the animals that he loved, including pigs which, alongside dogs, remained his favourites. A second spell as a tenant farmer was no more successful, for the same reasons, and, despite hard work (especially on the part of Dick’s wife, Myrle), after its failure, Dick gave up farming for good.

When a brief effort as a sales rep also came to naught, Dick, at 49, set out to qualify as a teacher, and so found himself training in parallel with his elder daughter, Juliet. Launching into the classroom at 53, he taught at Farmborough primary school, Bath, for the next eight years. The fact that he was good teacher came as no surprise to his family, who knew that he loved acting and was always regarded as a natural storyteller and narrator – to the extent of being described at home as a dreadful show-off.

Dick found teaching rewarding, and it also stimulated him to return to writing, but now he had a clear audience in mind – children. His first book, The Fox Busters (1978), had its origins in his farming experience where he had imagined what might happen if, instead of the fox always killing the chickens, the chickens had turned against the fox. The feisty hens are a formidable brood and their successful efforts to defeat the fox are hilarious.

The Fox Busters was well reviewed, and Dick followed it up with a story about a sparrow, which his publishers rejected. Undaunted, he wrote Daggie Dogfoot, his first book about a pig, which was published in 1980. Three more books followed before he wrote The Sheep-Pig – a charming story about how a runt, won in a competition by the near-silent but wise Farmer Hoggett, latches on to the farm sheepdog and, thanks to its exceptional prowess as a sheep-pig, saves its own bacon – made an immediate impact. Dick won The Guardian children’s book prize for it and was hailed as the inventor of a new form of animal fiction.

During the next 20 years, he wrote with increasing energy. He was producing as many as seven or eight books a year, almost all about the animals he loved. Titles included The Hodgeheg (1987), a nicely told, darkly humorous story about how hedgehogs can avoid getting squashed on the road, which became the talisman for the Young Puffin Club.

Dick’s fame quickly spread beyond his stories. He and his animals, especially his dog Dodo, also became the stars of three television series, first Rub-a-Dub-Tub (1983), then Pob’s Programme (1985-87), and finally Tumbledown Farm (1988-89). Dick turned out to be a natural in front of the camera. Always humorous, he was an excellent and entertaining commentator on the animals and their characteristics. His very deep affection for all living creatures was never unduly sentimental. His brand of anthropomorphism is easy for a very wide audience to enjoy.

From the success of The Sheep-Pig, Dick went on to win many other awards, including children’s author of the year in the 1991 British Book awards and the children’s book of the year in 1995. That year, with the release of Babe, his books became all the more successful and he achieved a reputation that reached well beyond the children who read his books. He was appointed OBE in the 2010 New Year honours for his services to children’s literature.

Dick strayed away from animal stories rarely, and equally rarely away from humour. The two most notable exceptions are Godhanger (1996) and The Crowstarver (1999). Dick was an avowed atheist but in Godhanger, influenced by conversations with his son, Giles, a vicar, Dick wrote an animal story full of spiritualism and a search for an afterlife. He was anxious about the book, knowing that he was not on such sure ground, but it was a brave attempt and showed that he had a greater range of writing within him. The Crowstarver, set in the area where he had been a trainee farmer during the Second World War, is a touching story about a boy with learning difficulties. Dick won the Special Educational Needs award for it.

Dick married Myrle, who had been a childhood friend, in 1943, when both were serving in the forces. Theirs was a long and happy marriage. They had three children, Juliet, Giles and Liz, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in whom Dick took the greatest delight. He was unusual for men of his generation in adoring babies, and in expressing it completely naturally. Myrle supported Dick in all his ventures and was his first reader, until her death in 2000. The following year, Dick married Zona Bedding, an old family friend.

After Myrle’s death, Dick felt that he should continue to write but found it harder to find the successful ingredients. While he became increasingly frail and his memory began to fade, he was still a demon at the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword and remained the usual winner of a King-Smith family anagram game.

He is survived by Zona, his children, 14 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild.

By Julia Ecleshare in The Guardian, Wednesday 5 January 2011

Brian Jacques

A former merchant sailor whose children’s books sold millions worldwide has died aged 71.

Brian Jacques’ Redwall series of books were translated into 29 languages and sold 20m globally. He first wrote the series, set in an abbey populated by animals, for children at the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool.

The Liverpool-born writer’s weekly show, Jakestown, ran on BBC Radio Merseyside for more than 20 years. He died after a heart attack at the weekend and leaves a wife and two grown up sons. Mr Jacques grew up near to the docks in Liverpool and when he left school at 15, travelled the world as a merchant seaman. In the sixties, with his two brothers, he formed a folk group called The Liverpool Fishermen.

He wrote 21 novels in the Redwall series, which were also turned into a TV series and an opera. Some critics compared them to JRR Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings and Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Even as a child he showed literary talent. He was caned by a teacher who could not believe that a 10-year-old could write so well when he penned a short story about a bird who cleaned a crocodile’s teeth.

BBC 7 February 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12380763

Margaret K. McElderry

Margaret K. McElderry, a book editor who employed shrewd intuition, critical acumen and a nurturing way with authors to help shepherd children’s literature from a prewar cottage industry to today’s billion-dollar business, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 98.

Her death was confirmed by Emma Dryden, who for many years worked at Ms. McElderry’s side as an editor at Margaret McElderry Books, the first children’s imprint named for an editor. Ms. McElderry came to be called the grande dame of children’s publishing, having transcended the typical anonymity of book editors by riding the crest of the postwar baby boom, helping to provide it with a new breed of engaging, nonpatronizing literature.

She recruited authors with a newer sensibility, ventured into controversial subjects, like the ravages of war, and led the way in publishing foreign works.

Her faith in her taste was the cornerstone of her success. She trusted her first impressions of a work, saying the good ones almost compel readers to ask a single question: “What happens next?” In a 1996 profile, Library Trends, a professional journal, praised her “empathetic curiosity.” “She wouldn’t publish anyone whose writing she didn’t love,” said Susan Cooper, author of The Dark Is Rising, an acclaimed five-book series of children’s novels published in 1973. Ms. McElderry’s stable of writers and illustrators also included Margaret Mahy, Irene Haas, Eleanor Estes, Ashley Bryan and Helen Oxenbury.

Ms. McElderry was alert to commercial possibilities. “It doesn’t hurt to have a book that sells awfully well every once in a while,” she said.

She did not exactly glide to success. As a senior at Mount Holyoke, she was told by a counselor that she had nothing to offer the publishing industry, so she went to library school. Even after she had climbed to the peak of her profession in 1971 — having edited winners of many Newbery and Caldecott Medals — her boss baffled her by saying, “The wave of the future had passed you by.” So she sifted through a dozen job offers and moved on to Atheneum, where she was given her own imprint.

Her success in both the artistic and commercial realm showed in the many prizes her authors won. In 1952, she became the first editor whose books won both the Newbery (for writing) and Caldecott (for illustration) in the same year. Ms. Estes’s Ginger Pye won the Newbery, and Finders Keepers by Will Lipkind, with illustrations by Nicolas Mordvinoff, won the Caldecott.

Other titles became a cherished part of bedtimes for more than a generation, including Mary Norton’s Borrowers and Ms. Mahy’s Changeover, both of which won Carnegie Medals.

Her success with imports included a volume of Michio Mado’s poetry translated into English by Empress Michiko of Japan. She was the first editor to publish a children’s book translated from German after World War II, Margot Benary-Isbert’s Ark, which told of America’s former enemies trying to stay alive in the rubble.

Many said Ms. McElderry showed courage in 1950 by publishing The Two Reds by Mr. Lipkind and Mr. Mordvinoff, the story of a boy with red hair and a red cat. Fearing the title would evoke Communists, many booksellers refused to sell the book; F. A. O. Schwarz in New York removed it from a window display.

“The publication of this book restores one’s faith in the experimental daring of American publishers,” Louise Seaman Bechtel wrote in The New York Herald Tribune. Ms. Bechtel was the first editor of juvenile books at an American publishing house, Macmillan.

Margaret Knox McElderry was born on June 10, 1912, in Pittsburgh, and attributed her early love of stories to the folk tales her mother told while gardening. After graduating from Mount Holyoke, she followed her counselor’s advice to avoid publishing and graduated from the Carnegie Library School in Pittsburgh. She got a job in the children’s department of the New York Public Library at a salary of $1,320 a year. She dusted the office, answered the pedestal phone and helped read stories in city parks. After working for the Office of War Information in Europe during World War II, she took over the children’s department at Harcourt, Brace. After what she called “the slap in the face” of being told she was not part of the future, Ms. McElderry went to Atheneum, which merged into Scribner, which merged into Macmillan, which merged into Simon & Schuster. She kept her personal imprint through the corporate changes.

In the 1970s Ms. McElderry married Storer D. Lunt, a former president of W. W. Norton, the publisher. He died about a decade later. She left no immediate survivors. She continued to edit books into her 90s as editor at large of her imprint.

Ms. McElderry saw children’s books as the foundation of the publishing industry. “If you don’t catch them young,” she said, “you won’t have any adult readers.”

Obituary by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, 15 February 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/arts/16mcelderry.html?_r=3&src=twrhp

Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones, writer, born 16 August 1934; died 26 March 2011

Like many good writers, Diana Wynne Jones, who has died aged 76 of cancer, worked for long years in relative obscurity, in her case sustained as a children’s fantasy author by a modestly sized but devoted young readership. That obscurity provided the freedom to develop her own voice without the distractions of having to build on perceived success. By the time real success found her, in Jones’s case almost by chance, she was a mature writer with a solid and varied body of work that was ready to be appreciated by a much bigger new audience.

Her intelligent and beautifully written fantasies are of seminal importance for their bridging of the gap between “traditional” children’s fantasy, as written by CS Lewis or E Nesbit, and the more politically and socially aware children’s literature of the modern period, where authors such as Jacqueline Wilson or Melvyn Burgess explicitly confront problems of divorce, drugs and delinquency.

Jones’s fiction is relevant, subversive, witty and highly enjoyable, while also having a distinctly dark streak and a constant awareness of how unreliable the real world can seem. Disguises and deceptions abound. Though avoiding criminally dysfunctional families or unwanted pregnancies, her cleverly plotted and amusing adventures deal frankly with emotional clumsiness, parental neglect, jealousy between siblings and a general sense of being an outcast. Rather than a deliberately cruel stepmother, a Jones protagonist might have a real mother far more wrapped up in her own career than in the discoveries and feelings of her child. The child protagonist would realise this, but get on with the adventure anyway.

Jones wrote from experience: her parents were neglectful of her needs, and those of her two younger sisters. The sisters often went hungry, and for years were banished to sleep in an unheated lean-to shed, to make room in case of visitors. Both parents were intellectuals and progressive educators, but were stingy not only with money but also with warmth and attention. The skinflint father bought the children a complete set of Arthur Ransome books as Christmas presents, but doled them out at a rate of one a year. In self-defence Jones began to write stories for her sisters and herself. When the Second World War broke out Jones and her family were evacuated to the Lake District, eventually living in the house once inhabited by the Altounyan children, on whom Ransome had based his Swallows and Amazons series. The great children’s author was still around, one day complaining angrily that the children were making too much noise. On another occasion, Diana’s younger sister and a friend had their faces slapped by a second Lakeland author who hated children but who was rich and famous because of them: Beatrix Potter. Jones’s distinctive scepticism about conventional children’s fiction must have started to set in early.

Later, when she went to St Anne’s college, Oxford, two of her lecturers were JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. Both were then engaged on their famous works of fantasy, but at that time fantasy was distinctly de trop at Oxford. The two professors were tolerated because they were also excellent scholars. Lewis boomed excitingly to crowded halls, while Tolkien muttered inaudibly to Jones and three other students.

Years later, just as she was starting to write and publish professionally, and was taking bed-rest because of pregnancy, Jones read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for the first time. This made her realise that a fantasy novel could be not only long, but seriously intended too.

As she became more certain of her own writing, she also grew more sceptical of the conventional tropes of fantasy, including those of Tolkien. This questioning became overt with the publication of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996). Presenting her book as a tourist guide to a foreign land, Jones, with affectionate but deadly effect, spoofed or parodied the numerous clichés that riddle those hordes of three-volume sagas about elves and quests.

Jones, of course, knew that her novels too were not immune from lampoon, but this book declared her self-awareness, the likeable distance so relished by her audience. Her growing band of readers also knew that Jones’s own novels easily transcended the routine stuff of rings and magic and ancient runes.

The first of the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling appeared in 1997, and by the turn of the century had become a sensational success. Other publishers were looking around for books they could market to the same vast audience, and were quick to realise that Jones had been fruitfully engaged in fantasy for nearly 30 years.

Superficial similarities may be a double-edged sword; one of her series of books features a wizards’ university. Among her most popular creations is the Chrestomanci series (novels and short stories – the first appeared in 1977), in which a nine-lived enchanter operates across multiple realities as a civil servant in charge of preventing the abuse of magic; the series includes an idiosyncratic school story, Witch Week (1982). Of the apparent coincidences, Jones said generously to this newspaper in 2003: “I think that she [Rowling] read my books as a young person and remembered lots of stuff; there are so many striking similarities.”

Her career began as a playwright, with three plays produced in London between 1967 and 1970; her first novel, Changeover (1970), was adult humour; since then her work has been written for younger readers. Besides the two series already mentioned, she wrote the Howl books, beginning with Howl’s Moving Castle (1986; filmed in 2004 by Hayao Miyazaki), and two sequels, and the Dalemark sequence (1975-2003), dark-tinged fantasies set in that eponymous country.

Some of her best and most enjoyable books are stand-alones, in particular The Ogre Downstairs (1974), The Time of the Ghost (1981) and Fire and Hemlock (1985), each a remarkable blend of pathos and genuinely funny writing. Archer’s Goon (1984), extravagantly mixing fantasy with science fiction, was serialised for television by the BBC in 1992. Her most recent novel, the light-hearted Enchanted Glass, appeared last year.

Jones won innumerable awards for her writing, including three Carnegie commendations, the Guardian award and a lifetime achievement World Fantasy award. In 2006 she was made an Honorary DLitt by the University of Bristol. She was amused by the considerable academic attention her work attracted; reading in one paper that her work was “rooted in fluidity”, she remarked: “Obviously hydroponic, probably a lettuce, possibly a cabbage.”

Jones was born in London of Welsh parents; she met her husband-to-be, the Chaucerian scholar John A Burrow, just before she went up to Oxford; they married in 1956 and had three sons, Richard, Michael and Colin, all of whom survive her, as do five grandchildren.

Christopher Priest, The Guardian, Sunday 27 March 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/27/diana-wynne-jones-obituary

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