GILES cartoons

Every Christmas my Dad got a Giles Cartoon Annual. It had cartoons by a man called Carl Giles that he had drawn for a newspaper.

The cover of the book always told a tale. After you saw what was happening on the front cover, you could turn it over and see what happened next or what had caused the problem on the front.

Here is a typical Giles scene.  It is a lovingly and expertly drawn picture of a traditional vicarage garden party.  The thin woman in purple is Aunty Vera who is always ill.  The older woman in black is the notorious Grandma.  Seeing Grandma Giles at a vicarage tea-party (if you know anything about her shocking antics) is funny in itself.  Everyone is being very well-behaved and playing the genteel sport of croquet...

...then you see a typical cartoon bomb hurtling into the ancient porchway of the vicarage.  Very out of place - so you flip the book over to see where it came from.

It was Stinker that did it.  Stinker is one of the anarchistic eight-year olds that Giles liked to draw.  You can see him with his thick black thatch of hair being cheered on by the junior school riff-raff behaving like football hooligans.

And what happens next?  That is left to our imagination.  But the humour is certainly black.  Bombs going off and people being killed are not seen as funny by most people. We must assume that Stinker's bomb failed to explode.  Giles was a humane man.  He had seen the horrors of the Second World War and hated violence.  You can see what he thought of dictators, thugs and bullies in his cartoons.

The black and white cartoons inside the annual were about things that had happened in the news during the previous twelve months.  There were cartoons about the goings on of our Queen or other world leaders and cartoons about things that affected ordinary people's everyday life.  I was too young to understand what the main topic of his cartoons was, but I LOVED to study the pictures.

There were funny details in his cartoons.  Absurd fashions, naughty children, accidents about to happen.  I enjoyed seeing his Giles family best of all.  Carl Giles certainly influenced my drawing style.

It is a case of something not intended for children that is fascinating for them.  Like Star Wars and my four year-old son...

Richard Scarry

When I was about four years old I loved studying Richard Scarry books. 'Studying' sounds a bit grand for a four year-old, but I did feel a need to look closely at Scarry's pictures. It was the detail in his drawings and his humour that attracted me.  That is still true today.

I enjoy writing and drawing for children, so I think that Richard Scarry was an early inspiration for me.  I have just read that he was born in The USA but worked in Switzerland.  This explains why Busytown seem to be such a mix of North American and European styles.  I think this makes Busytown seem familiar to people from both continents.

This picture comes from Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? Huckle Cat is playing in a fountain. His Mummy is going bonkers, screaming that Huckle is drowning, so brave Sergeant Murphy dives in to save him.

I love the humor. The adults are overreacting, the child seems quite content but looks mildly interested to see a policeman flying towards him.

Once again Murphy's motorbike is tested to the limit. Such wonderful details.  I still wonder why Murphy has those grubby old shoes attached to his radio antenna.

Richard Scarry's text is so dry -  'Murphy saves Huckle from drowning in the fountain' - which you won't be able to say about Huckle or Murphy.

I enjoy making people laugh and I know that children like humourous writing and pictures.  Details in pictures absorb a child's interest and I shall be back soon with some other inspirations:  Carl Giles cartoons and Ronald Searle drawings.

See you back here soon!

Henry's Wagon by Peg Dikeman

The first book that I want to share with you is the first book that I loved. I don't remember wanting my parents to read Henry's Wagon to me every night, but that is what they had to do as they told me later.  I still have the book and have also read it to my three sons when they were small.

My sons had their own favourites:  Thomas the Tank Engine, and the Ahlbergs' Peepo and Each Peach Pear Plum. Small children become very attached to certain books.  In the end the parents either become sick to death of the book or proudly recite the whole book at parties to their amused or bored friends.

My favourite colour as a little boy was green.  I wonder if it is because Henry makes a lovely messy job of painting his wagon green?  He then goes into the kitchen to tell the family's cook: "Bessy, I'm a little messy." In fact, he was well on the way to looking like a sticky green alien...