Jan Pieńkowski, the beloved illustrator and author of more than 140 children’s books, has died aged 85.

Pieńkowski, whose work included the pop-up books Meg and Mog, lived with Alzheimer’s disease.

Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s Books, confirmed he died on Saturday morning.

Pieńkowski’s work is often inspired by his Polish childhood and his experiences as a wartime refugee. His interest in paper cut-outs stemmed from his stay in an air-raid shelter in Warsaw, where a soldier amused him by cutting newspapers into shapes for him.

Meg and Mog, made in collaboration with the late writer Helen Nicoll, was an illustrated adventure series about an unfortunate witch and her striped cat.

Pieńkowski said in an interview that the series gave him the opportunity to turn monsters from his childhood into harmless toys. He drew his palette from comics such as Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace.

“Jan was one of the great storytellers: an exceptionally talented creator, who was guided by what interested him and who treated children as his equals,” Dow said Sunday.

“There was an impatience and wonderful curiosity about him as he sought new ways to tell stories: tapping into his Polish roots with his cutout and silhouette work; his extraordinary use of color; his pioneering interest in computer drawing; and of course his award-winning pop-ups that have challenged publishers and printers to find new ways to create his books.

Pieńkowski, she added, meticulously pored over every detail “and yet achieved the nigh-impossible: simple, magical storytelling, which is why his books – like my personal favorites and those of our family, the brilliant stories of Meg and Mog – live on.I was very lucky to have had the chance to know him and work with him.

After Nicoll’s death in 2012, Pieńkowski worked on new titles Meg and Mog with his civilian partner, David Walser, a translator, artist, musician and writer.

“One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that Jan never treats kids like kids,” Walser said a few years ago. “It wouldn’t occur to him to talk to them, he just behaves perfectly normally… When he works with kids, he’s one of them.”

British author Ed Vere, who is Walser’s godson, said: “Jan Pieńkowski has lived an inspiring life dedicated to creating books of the highest quality – pioneering, clever, beautifully thought out and always created with a playful flair. some pleasure.”

He added: “Full of love, curiosity, art, thought, fun and laughter. He will be greatly missed, as a man and as a leading figure in children’s books.

For his work as a children’s author, Pieńkowski received the 2019 award Booktrust Lifetime Achievement Awardwhich has in the past been credited to some of the biggest names in children’s books, including Shirley Hughes, Raymond Briggs and Judith Kerr.

Critic Nicolette Jones, who presided over the judges selecting Pieńkowski for the award, said he “brings magic to children’s illustration”, while fellow judge, SF author Said, said: ” Books such as Meg and Mog have shaped so many generations now that they have become part of the fabric of British childhood and culture in general.

Pieńkowski has also been twice nominated in the UK – in 1982 and 2008 – for the International Hans Christian Andersen Prize, the highest honor given to creators of children’s books.

He won the Kate Greenaway Award in 1971 with writer Joan Aiken for their second collaboration, The Kingdom Under the Sea, which included Eastern European fairy tales. He won his second Greenaway Award in 1979 for the spooky pop-up book Haunted House, which demonstrated his gothic leanings.

Pieńkowski was born in Warsaw to a squire father and a scientist mother. He was three years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, forcing the family to move to Europe before finally settling in England in 1946.

In London, he attended Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in Holland Park, where he learned Latin and Greek, before going to King’s College, Cambridge to study classics and English.

He has illustrated for Granta magazine and designed posters for university theater productions. Early in his career, Pieńkowski was employed to sketch live on the BBC Watch children’s show!, before the book world found out.

Along with Meg and Mog and his pop-up books, he is known for his illustrations of fairy tales by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, The Nutcracker and The Mountain of Glass: Tales from Poland.

Fans paid tribute to Pieńkowski on social media following news of his death. Children’s author Christopher Edge wrote“When I think back to my earliest memories of childhood reading, Meg and Mog’s books shine brightly. Thank you, Jan Pieńkowski.

Children’s author and illustrator Shoo Rayner added: “Sad news – Jan Pieńkowski was an inspiration to me when I started.”

The London Review bookshop job: “RIP Jan Pieńkowski – Haunted House is one of the best books in the store, every time a child discovers it while browsing the children’s section, they are blown away.”

It could easily be mistaken for overnight success or a sudden career change, but it’s really just the latest chapter in a story that began 20 years ago.

It could easily be mistaken for overnight success or a sudden career change: Longtime Madison journalist and former Isthmus editor Dean Robbins has published four children’s books in the past year . But this is really just the latest chapter in a story that began 20 years ago – a story that has hardly been written at all.

“I’ve always had a pantheon of heroes since I was little, and I never got out of it,” Robbins says of people like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and Louis Armstrong – historical figures he had pictures of on his back. wall, yesterday and today. When Robbins became a father, he began telling his son “heartbreaking stories of those incredible lives”. Then he started writing them. In the mid-2000s, he wrote a manuscript on Ruth and sent it to Harcourt. The editor accepted it immediately, then asked for more. Robbins quickly wrote manuscripts on Robinson and Armstrong – Harcourt picked them both up. “I had fantasies of my son and his boyfriends coming to see me read at Borders when these books came out,” Robbins says.

Then Houghton Mifflin acquired Harcourt and the publisher who had championed his books disappeared, leaving the titles “orphaned” before they could be published. Robbins dusted himself off, got an agent, and tried, unsuccessfully, for another seven years to sell a book. Her son has grown up. Borders closed. “So many years have passed and I thought, ‘Am I crazy to keep trying to do this?’ “says Robbins. “One of my favorite Babe Ruth quotes is, ‘It’s very hard to beat someone who never gives up.’ ”

Finally, in 2013, Robbins’ agent sold his first children’s book to Scholastic: “Two Friends,” a story that depicts the actual moment Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass got together for tea and a chat. Robbins has now published eight children’s books, including 2021-22’s “You Are a Star, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” “Thank You, Dr. Salk!” “¡Mambo Mucho Mambo!” and “The fastest girl in the world!” All four are with different editors and feature different illustrators, and they continue to translate complex adult biographies and themes into accessible, dramatic, and fun books for children. Robbins was finally able to fulfill her dream of reading aloud to children with classroom and bookstore readings – until the pandemic. Most of Robbins’ school appearances in 2021 have gone virtual. Ongoing supply chain issues have also pushed the release of his fourth title into 2022. But Robbins has no shortage of ideas or passion he can draw on to write about his heroes – he’s released three more. titles over the next two years and says there are “probably hundreds” of additional manuscripts on his hard drive – and he’s certainly no stranger to writing through challenges.

“One of the reasons I didn’t quit was because it was so fun to write the stories,” says Robbins, who has never stopped working in journalism and is currently co-editor. from On Wisconsin magazine. “I have such a strong feeling about these people that I’m writing about, it’s kind of like a way to get closer to them, do some research, and then write the story and try to bring them to life on the page in a way that might interest or inspire someone else.

Learn more about local authors and books here.

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]]> https://nyisbookcountry.com/navigation-is-alive-and-well-in-middleburys-huge-monroe-street-books-books-seven-days/ Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:02:02 +0000 https://nyisbookcountry.com/navigation-is-alive-and-well-in-middleburys-huge-monroe-street-books-books-seven-days/

A common refrain from Middlebury’s new customers Monroe Street Books is “I should have quit years ago,” according to employee Timm Williams. The Used Book Emporium is the definition of a hidden gem, albeit hidden in plain sight.

The unassuming Red Barn Warehouse is on Route 7 about two miles north of Middlebury. With no foot traffic on the rural stretch of the highway and motorists speeding by at 50 mph or more, it’s easy to miss, especially for southbound travelers. A row of trees on the north side of the property obscures the store until it’s almost too late to stop.

Certainly, second-hand bookstores are not uncommon in the Green Mountains. the Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association, of which Monroe Street Books is a member, lists nearly 25 physical stores statewide. With 100,000 volumes on the shelves, however, arranged in complex logic, the Middlebury store offers avid readers the pleasure of seemingly endless browsing.

Towering 12-foot bookcases fill most of the cavernous space. The upper shelves are only accessible by self-service ladders. Almost floor-to-ceiling shelving also spans three of the perimeter walls.

Scattered around the shop are other receptacles filled with books – rolling carts, milk crates, steamer trunks. The store’s concrete floor, exposed duct work, and hanging strips of fluorescent lights make it feel a bit like being in Disney’s Belle library. The beauty and the Beast crossed with a fallout shelter.

“The building is big enough that you can really lose the people you came with, like you would lose a toddler in a supermarket,” Dwight Garner written by e-mail. A Middlebury College alumnus and contributor to Burlington’s first alternative weekly, the avant-garde pressGarner is now a literary critic at the New York Times. A longtime fan of the store, he called it “one of America’s greatest second-hand bookstores, period.”

In addition to those 100,000 books on the shelves, Monroe Street Books has an additional 50,000 titles available only online. On a recent Monday morning, 18-year-old employee Williams sat down among dozens of children’s books and vintage classical music CDs that are kept just off the sales floor.

Books sold online are usually the most fragile, he explained: “If they’re in the store and they’re handled over and over again, their condition depreciates.”

Williams sports several silver rings, a pearl necklace and a studded bracelet; his eyes are lively and curious. A book collector and seller for decades, he was a longtime customer of the store at its original location on Middlebury’s Monroe Street, which opened in 1992. Now he works in the store daily.

The original space was small, Williams said. The store’s owners, Dick and Flanzy Chodkowski, moved to the new location in 2004 because their inventory exceeded the old store’s capacity.

In 2018, Dick Chodkowski told the Addison County Independent that the couple opened the original location behind their home after moving to Vermont from Los Angeles. Coming from a career in advertising, Chodkowski had amassed a collection of books on graphic art and photography.

At the time of Addy Indy article, mail order made up nearly half of the store’s annual sales, according to Chodkowski. On a recent call, he said those numbers haven’t changed much. During the summer tourist season, he noted, when his store is a prime destination for out-of-state visitors, in-store sales tend to increase.

As the store acquires new titles through estate sales, donations and other methods, sections grow and shrink, Williams said. If he discovers an increase in titles on the same theme in a genre or subgenre, he can create a new section to contain the overflow.

More is always better, he continued, joking that empty shelf space is something “you just can’t have”.

Despite its massive stock and daunting space, Monroe Street Books “is actually meticulously curated”, Chris Bohjalian written by e-mail to Seven days. The best-selling author, who lives in Addison County, is a regular at the store.

He said his recent purchases at Monroe Street Books have included vintage novels, non-fiction books and safari magazines, such as 1960s titles by Robert Ruark. Uhuru and Use enough weapons: big game hunting. The books helped Bohjalian research his next novel The lionessout May 10.

Some categories of the library are ultra-specific. Rows of books covering virtually every country and region take up considerable space. In “mystery” you will find “historical mystery”. A section devoted to American presidents presents dozens of books on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Vintage science fiction paperbacks are prominently displayed on a wheeled rack and pinned in plastic sleeves at the ends of the aisles.

There is a sly spirit in the way some books are organized. A section on maritime disasters is adjacent to that on pirates. In “games”, a small section dedicated to “mind games” is on the top shelf. It’s awfully out of reach without the help of one of the many ladders scattered around the store.

The shop also sells posters and vinyls. On my way out I spotted and grabbed a copy of Bronski Beat Truth action Double actiona chance find given that the British synth-pop band’s co-founder Steve Bronski died on December 7, 2021.

Keeping track of what’s on the shelves is a delicate and dynamic process, Williams said. While online stock is electronically cataloged, in-store merchandise is not. If a customer asks for a specific title, one of the store’s four employees must scour the shelves to find it.

“If you have any questions, ask everyone who works there. They know the place,” Bohjalian wrote. “I have no idea how, but they do.”

Williams said the store does not currently acquire new titles except through donations. (During my visit, a man stopped by with a large box practically overflowing with children’s picture books.) However, in late spring or summer, staff will have to start buying again to restock the shelves. .

There’s no magic formula for how they choose what to buy, Williams said. But the price is quite easy to determine. Chodkowski said he uses the aggregate website Add all to quickly compare prices from all the major online booksellers. Although the pandemic has reduced in-store purchases somewhat, “it’s kind of balanced out by people reading more during this time,” he said.

The store can never have too many copies of timeless classics such as Moby-Dick and Slaughterhouse-Five. But obscure titles can be just as appealing. Off the cuff, Williams noted odd discoveries such as the collected works of underage Polish poets and period pamphlets on the creation of threads.

“We welcome people here who have very specific tastes,” he said.

Some customers come for works from individual publishers such as Germany’s Taschen, known for producing large art books. Bohjalian said his wife, artist and photographer Victoria Blower, tried his hand at the art of experimental collage. Monroe Street Books is her go-to for retro and vintage imagery.

“Where can you find the Seventeen A magazine’s guide to girls’ etiquette from 1971 or a scouting manual from 1950? wrote Bohjalian.

Monroe Street Books is a digger’s paradise. In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, the store is keeping things grounded in the physical.

“We still have a totemic connection to paper books,” Bohjalian wrote. “Just surrender. Fall down the rabbit hole and be happy.

Illustrating children’s books with too many detailed, non-essential images makes it “more difficult for children to concentrate and absorb knowledge”, a study has shown.

Colorful images meant to engage young readers can achieve the exact opposite by distracting attention from the story text, US researchers have warned.

Although reading is considered a ‘gateway to learning’, around 20% of children in the UK do not achieve the minimum level of literacy proficiency.

Children’s books typically include eye-catching illustrations to help readers visualize the characters and story setting.

However, eye-tracking studies have found that too many images can be distracting.

reading book, with text highlighted in blue, essential images in green, and distracting, non-essential illustrations highlighted in red” class=”blkBorder img-share” style=”max-width:100%” />

Colorful images meant to engage young readers can achieve the exact opposite by distracting attention from the story text, US researchers have warned. Pictured is an example of a children’s reading book, with text highlighted in blue, essential images in green, and distracting, non-essential illustrations highlighted in red

“Learning to read is hard work for many children,” said article author and psychologist Anna Fisher of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Foreign images can distract the reader’s eyes from the text and disrupt the concentration needed to understand the story.”

In their study, Dr. Fisher and his colleagues gave a group of adults a book designed for children’s reading practice and asked them to identify which images were entertaining but not essential to understanding the story.

These superfluous images were then removed from the second half of the book before the work was given to 60 American first and second grade students, i.e. aged 6 to 8, to read.

A wearable eye-tracker was used to monitor the number of times each student moved their gaze from text to images on the page.

The team found that children moved their gaze less when reading the simplified half of the book and had higher comprehension scores.

“During these primary school years, children go through a period of transition in which they are increasingly expected to read independently,” said the author of the article and psychologist Cassondra Eng, also from Carnegie Mellon University.

This has become even more true amid COVID-19, she added, which has forced children to learn with less in-person guidance from teachers.

The results of the study, she said, will allow us to “design materials based on learning theories that can be very useful for children and enrich their experiences with technology.”

Children who were most likely to look away from text while reading were also most likely to benefit from the simplified version, the team found.

Dr. Fisher and his colleagues have suggested that authors, illustrators and publishers consider removing distracting and unnecessary images from educational materials for first-time readers.

In their study, Dr Fisher and colleagues gave a group of adults a book designed for children’s reading practice (pictured, top) and asked them to identify which images were entertaining but not essential for understand the story. These superfluous images were later removed from the second half of the book (bottom) before the work was given to 60 American first and second graders – that is, those aged 6 to 8 – to read.

“It’s not a magic bullet, and it won’t solve all the challenges of learning to read,” Dr. Fisher warned.

“But if we can take steps to make it a little easier to practice reading and reduce some of the barriers, we can help children engage with printed material and derive enjoyment from it.”

The researchers cautioned, however, that the study was limited by its assessment of children’s reading habits based on a single book.

The full results of the study have been published in the journal npj Science of learning.