REMEMBERING JAN ORMEROD

 

A few days ago, I went with other writers, illustrators and friends of Jan Ormerod to her memorial gathering at The Falcon Inn in Uppingham. It had been organised by her daughters Laura and Sophie.

 

Jan will always be remembered for the way she drew children. 

In Moonlight the companion book to her first, award winning, picture book, Sunshine, she is able to show the tenderness between a father and daughter and capture all the stances and mannerisms of small children. (These images come from the first edition of the book.)

She could draw babies like nobody else –

like this one in Lizzie Nonsense, a picture book inspired by her Australian grandmother.

 

 

Jan was brought up in Western Australia and she captures the heat of that arid land in Water Witcher by using a limited palette and strong black line.

 

Again it’s the life and humour in her drawings of the children that make this book so special.

 

She once said, “My books have largely been a celebration and savoring of the positive experience of parenthood.”

But I think she did more than that. Jan had the ability to capture love, without sentimentality, between the pages of a book; here, a mother- daughter love in this picture from Lizzie Nonsense.   

 

 

ZEITGEIST

It's an annoying thing, but it can happen, that other authors have exactly the same idea as you at exactly the same time. They call it zeitgeist.

I had a bad case of zeitgeist in 1979 with my third picture book, Fly Home McDoo, a story about a racing pigeon.  Within a week or so of publication two other racing pigeon stories had appeared: Mr Potter's Pigeon illustrated by Reg Cartwright

and Bertha and the Racing Pigeon written and illustrated by Pam Ayres. Needless to say, McDoo lost the race.

There's not much you can do about zeitgeist - when an idea is 'in the air' we're all tapping into it.

 It was donkeys not pigeons in 1993. I did The Christmas Donkey embellished with gold

and Jan Ormerod illustrated Father Christmas and the Donkey embellished with silver.

That bit of zeitgeist worked to both Jan's and my advantage when, in December 1999, I was unable to give a Christmas Donkey talk to some librarians because I had to go into hospital. At short notice Jan kindly gave the talk for me and was able to give the librarians value for money by adding an extra bit on her Christmas donkey book and selling lots of copies of both.