Helen Oxenbury (1938-) Biography

Born 1938, in Suffolk, England; Education: Attended Ipswich School of Art and Central School of Arts and Crafts, London.

Agent—Elaine Greene, Ltd., 37 Goldhawk Rd., London W12 8QQ, England.

Writer and illustrator of children's books. Stage designer in Colchester, England, 1960, and Tel-Aviv, Israel, 1961; television designer in London, England, 1963.

Kate Greenaway Award, British Library Association (BLA), 1969, for The Quangle-Wangle's Hat; Baby Book Award, Sainsbury's, 1999, for Tickle, Tickle; Kurt Maschler Award, 1999, and Kate Greenaway Award, BLA, 2000, both for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Award, 2003, for Big Momma Makes the World.

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Numbers of Things, Heinemann (London, England), 1967, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1968, published as Helen Oxenbury's Numbers of Things, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1983.

Helen Oxenbury's ABC of Things, Heinemann (London, England), 1971, published as ABC of Things, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1972.

Pig Tale, Morrow (New York, NY), 1973.

The Queen and Rosie Randall (from an idea by Jill Buttfield-Campbell), Heinemann (London, England), 1978, Morrow (New York, NY), 1979.

729 Curious Creatures, Harper (New York, NY), 1980, published as Curious Creatures, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1985.

729 Animal Allsorts, Methuen (London, England), 1980, published as 729 Merry Mix-ups, Harper (New York, NY), 1980, published as Merry Mix-ups, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1985.

729 Puzzle People, Harper (New York, NY), 1980, published as Puzzle People, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1985.

Bill and Stanley, Benn (London, England), 1981.

Dressing, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Family, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Friends, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Playing, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Working, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Holidays, Walker Books (London, England), 1982.

Bedtime, Walker Books (London, England), 1982.

Shopping, Walker Books (London, England), 1982, published as Shopping Trip, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1982.

Mother's Helper, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1982.

Good Night, Good Morning, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1982.

Beach Day, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1982.

The Birthday Party, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1983.

The Drive, Walker Books (London, England), 1983, published as The Car Trip, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1983.

The Checkup, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1983.

The Dancing Class, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1983.

Eating Out, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1983.

Playschool, Walker Books (London, England), 1983, published as First Day of School, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1983.

Gran and Granpa, Walker Books (London, England), 1984, published as Grandma and Grandpa, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1984.

The Visitor, Walker Books (London, England), 1984, published as The Important Visitor, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1984.

Our Dog, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1984.

(Reteller) The Helen Oxenbury Nursery Story Book, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985, excerpts published as Favorite Nursery Stories and First Nursery Stories, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1994.

I Can, Walker Books (London, England), 1985, Random House (New York, NY), 1986.

IHear, Walker Books (London, England), 1985, Random House (New York, NY), 1986.

I See, Walker Books (London, England), 1985, Random House (New York, NY), 1986.

I Touch, Walker Books (London, England), 1985, Random House (New York, NY), 1986.

Baby's First Book and Doll, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1986.

All Fall Down, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Say Goodnight, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Tickle, Tickle, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Clap Hands, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Monkey See, Monkey Do, Dial Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1991.

It's My Birthday, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

Helen Oxenbury's Big Baby Book, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

"TOM AND PIPPO" SERIES; SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Tom and Pippo Go for a Walk, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Tom and Pippo Make a Mess, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Tom and Pippo Read a Story, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Tom and Pippo and the Washing Machine, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Tom and Pippo Go Shopping, Walker Books (London, England), 1988, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Tom and Pippo See the Moon, Walker Books (London, England), 1988, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Tom and Pippo's Day, Walker Books (London, England), 1988, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Tom and Pippo in the Garden, Walker Books (London, England), 1988, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Tom and Pippo in the Snow, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Tom and Pippo Make a Friend, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Pippo Gets Lost, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Tom and Pippo and the Dog, Aladdin Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Tom and Pippo on the Beach, Walker Books (London, England), 1992, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1993.

Tom and Pippo and the Bicycle, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1993.

Tom and Pippo and Tom's Boots, Campbell (London, England), 1999.

Tom and Pippo at the Doctor, Campbell (London, England), 1999.

Tom and Pippo at the Seaside, Campbell (London, England), 1999.

ILLUSTRATOR

Alexei Tolstoy, The Great Big Enormous Turnip, translated by E. Scimanskaya, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1968.

Edward Lear, The Quangle-Wangle's Hat, Heinemann (London, England), 1969, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1970.

Manghanita Kempadoo, Letters of Thanks, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1969.

Margaret Mahy, The Dragon of an Ordinary Family, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1969.

Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1970.

Ivor Cutler, Meal One, F. Watts (New York, NY), 1971.

Brian Anderson, compiler, Cakes and Custard, Heinemann (London, England), 1974, Morrow (New York, NY), 1975, revised abridged version with new illustrations published as The Helen Oxenbury Nursery Rhyme Book, Heinemann (London, England), 1986, Morrow (New York, NY), 1987.

Ivor Cutler, Balooky Klujypop, Heinemann (London, England), 1975, published as Elephant Girl, Morrow (New York, NY), 1976.

Ivor Cutler, The Animal House, Heinemann (London, England), 1976, Morrow (New York, NY), 1977.

Fay Maschler, A Child's Book of Manners, J. Cape (London, England), 1978, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1979.

Jill Bennett, selector, Tiny Tim: Verses for Children, Heinemann (London, England), 1981, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1982.

Michael Rosen, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1989.

Martin Waddell, Farmer Duck, Walker Books (London, England), 1991, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1992.

Eugene Trivizas, The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, Margaret K. McElderry Books (New York, NY), 1993.

Trish Cooke, So Much, Walker Books (London, England), 1994, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1995.

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1999.

Harriet Lerner and Susan Goldhor, Franny B. Kranny, There's a Bird in Your Hair!, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000, Walker Books (London, England), 2001.

Phyllis Root, Big Momma Makes the World, Walker Books (London, England), Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

Ruth Krauss, The Growing Story, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

"Helen Oxenbury is the book world's foremost authority on the antics (and anatomy) of small people," Tim Wynne-Jones wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Oxenbury was one of the first writers to design "board books," the small, durable, thick-paged creations intended especially for toddlers. In stories such as Friends, The Car Trip, and those in the "Tom and Pippo" series, Oxenbury shows babies, toddlers, and preschool-age children discovering new things and learning about life. Her uncomplicated and humorous illustrations have as much to tell her "readers" as her words do. As a result, "there is not a wrinkle of pudgy flesh nor bulge of diaper she has not lovingly portrayed in her bright, water-color survey of early childhood," Wynne-Jones added.

Oxenbury did not plan on becoming an illustrator when she was young. Instead, she found a talent for designing and painting scenery for plays. She began working in local theaters as a teenager, and chose to attend a college where she could study set design. At school, she met her future husband, John Burningham, who was interested in illustration and graphic design. She later followed him to Israel, where she worked as a scenery designer. After the couple returned to England, Burningham published his first book, the award-winning children's story Borka, and Oxenbury continued working in the theater. Shortly after the couple married in 1964, they had their first two children. Oxenbury left her career as a designer to care for them. "In those days it was jolly difficult to do two things, and we didn't have money for nannies," Oxenbury explained to Michele Field of Publishers Weekly. "I wanted something to do at home, and having watched John do children's books, I thought that was possible."

Two of Oxenbury's first projects were illustrations for books by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, and Edward Lear, known for his fanciful, colorful poems. In choosing to illustrate these works, Oxenbury found the books' humor most appealing. As she revealed in a Junior Bookshelf article, it was "the marvellous mixture of weird people in dreamlike situations surprising one by doing and saying quite ordinary and down-to-earth things one minute, and absurd, outrageous things the next" that made up her mind to take the jobs. She captured this contradictory feeling in Edward Lear's The Quangle-Wangle's Hat with pictures of strange creatures and the magical hat of many ribbons, loops, and bows. As Crispin Fisher noted in Children and Literature, "Her landscape is wide and magical, neither inviting nor repelling, but inexplicable—surely right for a Lear setting."

Oxenbury's first solo project was Numbers of Things, a picture book which uses familiar objects and animals to introduce young children to counting. Oxenbury covers single numbers from one to ten, then twenty through fifty by tens. The amusing pictures, "with their twenty balloons and fifty ladybirds, will help the child to comprehend the difference in quantity between these numbers," a Junior Bookshelf reviewer said. "But a fiddledee-dee on its instructional aspect!," a Publishers Weekly reviewer advised. "A hurrah instead for the fun of it all!" With its humorous yet simple approach and "shape, originality, and use of colour," Jean Russell commented in Books for Your Children, Numbers of Things "immediately established [Oxenbury] as a major children's book artist."

Just like Numbers of Things, Oxenbury's follow-up ABC of Things has "pictures that are imaginative and humorous as well as handsome," creating "a far better than average ABC book," Zena Sutherland said in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. Each letter is joined with several pictures that match it and can serve to spur the imagination. "The most incongruous associations are made in a perfectly matter-of-fact way," wrote a Times Literary Supplement reviewer, "setting the mind off in pursuit of the stories that must lie behind them."

Oxenbury began developing sturdy books for toddlers when her youngest child, Emily, was sick. "We were up half the night with her," the author told Field in Publishers Weekly, "and we had to think of things to show her to keep her mind off [her illness]." To make a book more appealing to such a young "reader," Oxenbury simplified her drawing style and focused on stories of babies and toddlers. She modified her layout so that a page with words would be paired with a larger, wordless, illustration. Finally, the books were to be made in smaller, square shapes that would be easier for little hands to manage. And the book's thicker pages would stand up to the chewing and abuse that any toddler's toy must survive.

Oxenbury's first series of board books, including Dressing, Family, Friends, Playing, and Working, are "perfectly in tune with the interests of the teething population, and at the same time executed with wit and the artistic awareness that at this age less is more," Betsy Hearne wrote in Booklist. "The pictures themselves are simple," Robert Wilson similarly noted in Washington Post Book World, "yet everywhere in the drawings there is subtle humor," as well as "a keenness of observation on the artist's part, a familiarity with the ways of the baby." And with their "masterful" portrayals of young children, especially the "delightfully lump-faced baby," Oxenbury's books are "certainly the series most likely to appeal to adults," Lucy Micklethwait concluded in the Times Literary Supplement.

Other collections have followed the baby as it grows into new abilities and activities. One series shows a toddler going to the beach, going shopping with mother, and helping out at home. The books are "fun, but more than that," Sutherland said in a review of Shopping Trip for Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books; they are also "geared to the toddler's interests and experiences."

Later series show children doing many things for the first time, such as going to a birthday party, visiting the doctor, going to school, and eating in a restaurant. Each episode usually involves some sort of mishap; in The Dancing Class, for example, a little girl trips and causes a pileup of students. "Comedy is always central to Oxenbury's vignettes," observed Denise M. Wilms in Booklist, and both kids and adults are targets in "these affectionate mirror views of their own foibles." In addition, Oxenbury "not only knows how children move but also how they think," Mary M. Burns of Horn Book said, for her easy writing style resembles "the matterof-fact reportorial style used by young children." As always, her "clever and colorful" illustrations contribute to "the subtle humor" of the story, Amanda J. Williams noted in a School Library Journal review of Our Dog.

Although she is writing and drawing for a very young audience, Oxenbury tries not to underestimate their ability to understand things. "I believe children to be very canny people who immediately sense if adults talk, write, or illustrate down to them, hence the unpopularity of self-conscious, child-like drawings that appear in some children's books," the author wrote in Junior Bookshelf. "The illustrator is misguidedly thinking the child will be able to identify more easily with drawings similar to his own, while probably he is disgusted that adults cannot do better." Oxenbury's own drawings are uncluttered rather than simple, and include many humorous details that adults, as well as children, can enjoy.

In The Helen Oxenbury Nursery Story Book, for instance, "her drawings really do add another dimension to each tale, and answer some of the questions that spring to a child's mind," Marcus Crouch commented in Junior Bookshelf. In this collection, the author retells, with her own illustrations, favorite stories such as "The Three Pigs," "Little Red Riding Hood," and eight others. "A collection of simple folk tales may not be unique," Ethel L. Heins wrote in Horn Book, "but an extraordinarily attractive one for early independent reading surely is." A major part of the book's charm lies in its pictures, "which give [the stories] a special, strongly personal and essentially youthful feeling," Margery Fisher commented in Growing Point. "At every turning of the page, an illustration delights the eye," Heins added. Throughout the book "the artwork exudes vigor, movement," as well as a lively humor "that manages to be both naive and sly."

In the late 1980s, Oxenbury introduced the recurring characters of Tom and Pippo in a series of picture books. Tom is a young boy with a constant companion Helen Oxenbury illustrated the 1999 edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. in his stuffed monkey, Pippo. Oxenbury's pictures again display her simple yet revealing style; even Pippo's face is "worth watching, whether he is frowning as he is stuffed into the washing machine or reaching down longingly from the clothesline towards Tom's outstretched arm," a Publishers Weekly critic remarked. The volumes also exhibit the broadly appealing humor that is the author's trademark. "Oxenbury understands her audience; young people as well as adults will find pleasure in repeated readings of these unassuming gems, and no one will be able to resist the facial expressions and postures of the long-suffering Pippo," Ellen Fader wrote in Horn Book.

Returning to the works of Lewis Carroll, Oxenbury took on the challenge of illustrating a new edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Her vision of Carroll's classic's up-side-down land, described by Booklist contributor Michael Cart as "a soft, beautiful, springtime world," garnered her the prestigious Kate Greenaway Award for illustration. Oxenbury updates the setting, which "makes it even more appealing and accessible to modern readers," thought Christian Science Monitor's Karen Carden. Instead of the traditional Alice, with her fancy Victorian dress and well-arranged ring-curls, Oxenbury's heroine wears a denim jumper and sneakers. Oxenbury also softened some of the scarier aspects of Carroll's tale; "the villains here are more stoogelike than menacing," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer. As a Horn Book contributor explained it, "Oxenbury delineates the story's humor with a gentle hand"; her "illustrations have a sweetness of tone and an amiable spirit."

Oxenbury also illustrated Harriet Lerner and Susan Goldhor's Franny B. Kranny, There's a Bird in Your Hair!, a humorous story about a free-spirited girl with equally free-spirited, frizzy hair in a family of straitlaced, well-coifed women. "Oxenbury's spirited illustrations . . . give loads of personality to the characters," noted a Horn Book reviewer. Oxenbury accomplishes this through telling details, such as Franny's mother's perfect, elaborate hairdo and her flawless manicure, and Mr. Kranny's reading glasses, which "give him a perennially perplexed look," Ann Cook wrote in School Library Journal. Reviewing Franny B. Kranny in Booklist, Gillian Engberg found the title "breezy fun for story hours, with plenty of discussion opportunities."

Oxenbury turned in another award-winning performance with her illustrations for Big Momma Makes the World, written by Phyllis Root. Root retells the traditional Creation story from Genesis, but with the twist that the male God is replaced by Big Momma, who does things a bit differently. "Oxenbury's luminous, oversized acrylics perfectly capture the strong, no-nonsense personality of this barefoot creator," thought School Library Journal reviewer Laurie von Mehren. Oxenbury's paintings also "aptly convey the tone of each day's production," a reviewer noted in Kirkus Reviews. Her palette changes as the creation progresses, from shades of black before the sun is made to an ever-increasing display of color as golden light and multi-colored birds, fish, flowers, and animals appear. Writing in Horn Book, Johanna Rudge Long found "the illustrations . . . superb, surprising the eye with their joyous variety," while Booklist's Ilene Cooper called Big Momma "an exciting, new version of one of the world's oldest stories."

Although the field of board books is now very popular, "old reliable Helen Oxenbury remains a standard against which to judge new entries," Sandra Martin wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail. A reviewer for the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books likewise found that Oxenbury is "still one of the best in terms of maintaining simple concepts, lively art, and action generated from objects." "All Helen's pictures have a vibrant wit and delicacy which is so vital in stimulating the imaginative child," Russell explained in Books for Your Children. "In Oxenbury's case, familiarity breeds not contempt, but admiration," Carolyn Phelan remarked in Booklist. "Using everyday concepts, simple drawings, and minimal color, she gives a child's view of ordinary things, creating books that are fresh, original, and appealing to both parents and children."

Despite her success with board books, Oxenbury continues to expand her accomplishments in another area. "I don't want to be pigeonholed," the illustrator told Field in Publishers Weekly. "It's that which I want to avoid more than anything else." Her main desire, she continued, is to fill the need for quality children's books that stand out among the crowd. "There are millions and millions of mediocre children's books. I hope we're not part of that."