Tag: Robin Jacques

A Book Of Spooks And Spectres

This being the second successive day of unrelenting rain I finished reading

published by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd in 1979, of which this is the book jacket.

Manning-Sanders introduces her collection of stories from all over the world by explaining the difference between Spooks who have always been ghostly beings with a king to rule over them and a country of their own; and “Spectres [who] on the other hand have not always been Spectres. They were once creatures of flesh and blood, generally human beings, who after death, find the gates of heaven and hell shut against them, and so must return to earth…” Spooks are generally happy beings, and spectres unhappy ones.

Each piece has been translated into lucid and clear prose in the author’s own language. “Ruth Manning-Sanders [1886-1988] was an English poet and author born in Wales, known for a series of children’s books for which she collected and related fairy tales worldwide. She published over 90 books in her lifetime” (Wikipedia)

Robin Jacques /ˈdʒeɪks/ (27 March 1920 – 18 March 1995) was a British illustratorwhose work was published in more than 100 novels and children’s books. He is notable for his long collaboration with Ruth Manning-Sanders, illustrating many of her collections of fairy tales from all over the world. In much of his work, Jacques employed the stippling technique. (Wikipedia)

Here are the drawings from this book.

I was clearly influenced by such illustrators when I produced the 1981 cover for the Queens Park Family Service Unit Annual Report, and the drawing of Auntie Gwen in 1985 for my Social Work Area Team magazine Age Lines

This evening we dined on Pepperoni Pizza and plentiful fresh salad with which I drank more of the Cahors.

The First Summer Year

SINGLE IMAGES MAY BE ENLARGED WITH A CLICK THAT CAN BE REPEATED. THIS METHOD COULD ALSO FURTHER ENLARGE THOSE IMAGES IN A GALLERY AFTER VIEWING FULL SIZE BY SCROLLING DOWN AND CHECKING BOX AT BOTTOM RIGHT
‘Robin Jacques /ˈdʒeɪks/ (27 March 1920 – 18 March 1995) was an illustrator whose work was published in more than 100 novels and children’s books. He is notable for his long collaboration with Ruth Manning-Sanders, illustrating many of her collections of fairy tales from all over the world. In much of his work, Jacques employed the stippling technique’ (Wikipedia) that influenced some of my own early illustrations such as this one of my

Auntie Gwen, featured in ‘Not Lost After All’.

It was Jacques’s illustrations, a selection of which appears above, that tempted me to buy ‘The First Summer Year’ (Oxford University Press, 1972) by Ian Kellam in a remainder bookshop sometime in the mid to late 1970s. The £0.60p outlay was to prove a wonderful bargain as my reading of it to them was to delight four of my children, one of whom must have penned ‘its good’ across the edges of the bottom pages.

This is a magical, suspenseful story which I enjoyed as much as did the children.
Following a telephone conversation I had a day or two ago with my grandson Malachi, an avid reader who lives in Australia, I posted the book to him, wondering whether his father, Sam, will remember it.

This afternoon our reupholstered sofa was returned. The job has been very well done.

Danni has visited and will stay the night.

Jackie has made a superbly spicy pumpkin pie to follow tonight’s dinner, which consisted of her classic cottage pie; crisp carrots, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. Elizabeth, Danni, and I finished the Merlot