Joyce Lankester Brisley

Sweet, simple stories, this is how you can describe the Milly Molly Mandy books. Set in the English countryside of the 1930s or so, Milly Molly Mandy is a little girl with a long name, who lives with her extended family in a cottage with a thatched roof. All her small adventures may seem quaint by today’s standards, such as growing mustard and cress, making a hide out, going blackberry picking, but it is almost The Good Life, how nice things could be away from computers and cars, and our ‘want, want, need, need’ society.

Joyce Lankester Brisley was born in 1896 and lived in London; however she frequently visited the countryside, where she took inspiration for her most famous character. She started earning money from illustrating when she was sixteen, and the first publishers of the M M M stories was The Christian Science Monitor in 1925, which sounds more like an academic paper than a publisher of children’s books. However, the format in which we today know the books was published three years later by Harraps, and Joyce went on to produce six collections of Milly Molly Mandy stories, the last one to appear in 1967.

The best thing about the Milly Molly Mandy books is that at the start of each book there is a large picture map of the village she lives in, so you can trace her journeys with your finger. In each subsequent book, the village changes a little, just as it would in real life, which is a great touch to look out for. The line illustrations inside the book effortlessly capture the essence of characters, with larger pictures full of detail and smaller, thoughtful studies in amongst the words.

The front cover says ‘Milly-Molly-Mandy stories, told and drawn by Joyce Lankester Brisley’. I love that – ‘told’. And each small adventure is told exactly as a child would see it, from the names of people (little-friend-Susan, Miss Muggins’s Jilly) to the descriptions of the village. The stories reinforce values such as friendship, of helping out, of responsibilities and of fun.

I was also delighted to read that Shirley Hughes wrote the foreword to a recent (2001) collection of Milly Molly Mandy stories, and described how much she loved them too. She went on to say how through reading the Milly Molly Mandy books, that she learnt the importance of building a complete picture of where her characters (such as Alfie) live and that her daughter went on to be the most recent illustrator of current editions of Milly Molly Mandy. What a fab full circle!

Shirley Hughes

Shirley Hughes is a gifted children’s illustrator and writer, creating many original characters over the years that have stood the test of time, from Alfie and little sister Annie-Rose, to Lucy and Tom.

What can I say about this talented lady? That she was kind enough to reply to me when I wrote to her during my Illustration degree, that the world she sculpts from her pencil leaps off the page, that she never talks down to children but presents the world from their angle, and that all her books simply smile at you from the shelf.

As seen here, one of her early books, Moving Molly (first published 1978), was one of my favourites. It presented my world, the world of London - of playing out in the street, of cats watching from their perch on garden walls, of the importance of imagination. She captures expressions very well and there is great attention to detail – especially in the clothes, which isn’t so surprising when you find out that Shirley trained in costume design, before going on to the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford.

Shirley Hughes started her life in illustration by trying to come up with sketches that would look good in her portfolio and then making a list of publishers, telephoning around to requesting an appointment with the art editor. This led to some paying work, which grew with each successful commission. Eventually, her work led around to children’s books and in 1960, she published Lucy and Tom’s Day, although it was from 1970, at the start of a long association with publishers The Bodley Head, that she came into her own as a children’s illustrator and author. She has won countless awards, including the prestigious Kate Greenaway award twice, and an OBE.

And, even better, she has just published her most recent book, Alfie and the Big Boys, this month. Nice to see she is still going strong! What can I learn from this lady - to carry a sketchbook around with me where-ever I go. And, like writing, to get any good you really have to do some of it each day.