Axel Scheffler, Golden PAN Award winner, was top of the 2021 list ol artists who illustrated children’s literature. He was the most successful illustrator both in terms of value and volume, with his biggest-selling title being ‘Cat’s Cookbook’ in which he collaborated with Julia Donaldson about a cat who is looking for a recipe book in a library, and part of the duo’s Acorn Wood series. In the list are at least three Golden PAN Award winners, namely Axel, Lydia Monks and Rod Campbell. I have photos of the first two with their award but I’d love to find one of Rod. I was in contact with his agent but nothing came of it. You can see them at work and their book titles mentioned HERE
I was going to try and be clever and put ‘hotspots’ on this scan of a page Pearl Buck covers from 1966 but that will be one for another day as they seem to be a bit hit and miss so far. Instead I’ll just put links to the titles.
‘The Living Reed’
‘With A Delicate Air’
‘The Mother’
‘Fighting Angel’
‘The Boindmaid’
‘Dragon Seed’
Having included some artwork by Hans Helweg in the previous list of Pearl Buck titles I found a few more of Hans Helweg’s I had forgotten about. This weeks is for Nucholas Monsarrat’s ‘The Story of Esther Costello’ for which Hans got paid £50 16s The film tells the story of teenager Esther who has been deaf and blind since the accident which killed her mother. Wealthy Margaret Landi, a native of Esther’s village in Ireland, is talked into helping to educate and possibly heal Esther. Margaret grows to love Esther as a daughter, but finds Esther’s innocence threatened by sleazy promoters and her own sleazy ex-husband. Any similarity to Helen Keller is purely coincidental apparently!
