Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Top 10 author/illustrator double acts

Chris Riddell is an accomplished graphic artist whose distinctive line drawings, with their clever caricature, fascinating detail and often enchanting fantasy elements are familiar to both children and adults.

He studied illustration at Brighton Polytechnic and has illustrated many acclaimed books for children, including two Kate Greenaway Medal winners.

Together with Paul Stewart, he is co-creator of the Far-Flung Adventures series, which includes Fergus Crane, Gold Smarties Prize Winner, Corby Flood and Hugo Pepper, both Silver Nestle Prize Winners.

Riddell and Stewart are also co-creators of the bestselling Edge Chronicles series, which has sold over two million books and is now available in over thirty languages.

Riddell is also a renowned political cartoonist, whose work appears regularly in UK newspapers the Observer and the Guardian, as well as The Literary Review and The New Statesman.

At the Guardian, he named his top ten author/illustrator double acts, including:
AA Milne and EH Shepard

One of the all time great collaborations, Milne's funny, poignant tales of Winnie the Pooh and friends and Shepard's fluent elegant ink drawings. The depth of characterisation and setting is breathtaking, with Shepard placing Milne's characters in real locations in the woodlands of Sussex and animating their every movement with the eye of a master. Shephard was also one of Britain's greatest political cartoonists.
Read about another entry on the list.

When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne is on Glen Roven's list of seven poetry books to ignite your imagination. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner is a book to which Jonathan Kozol will always return; and Winnie-the-Pooh is a book Walter Mosley hopes parents would read to their children.

--Marshal Zeringue