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Michael ForemanMichael Foreman
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Bibliography |
Prizes and awards |
Critical perspective
BiographyMichael Foreman was born in Suffolk in 1938 and grew up near Lowestoft. He studied at Lowestoft Art School, and at St Martin's School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. His first children's book was published while he was still a student.
After completing his studies, he travelled all over the world, making films and television commercials and doing hundreds of sketches which he later used as the inspiration for many of his books. Before becoming a full-time author and illustrator, he lectured at various Schools of Art.
He has illustrated books by authors such as Dickens, Shakespeare, The Brothers Grimm, Roald Dahl and Rudyard Kiping, has designed Christmas stamps for the Post Office, and regularly contributes illustrations to American and European magazines.
Michael Foreman also writes and illustrates his own books. He enjoys writing about earlier periods of history, including conflict and war, in books such as War Boy: A Country Childhood (1989), War Game (1993), and After The War Was Over (1995). The latter is about the soldiers of the First World War, was shortlisted for a Kate Greenaway Medal and won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Gold Award 6-8 years category and overall winner) in 1993. His latest books are The Littlest Dinosaur's Big Advenure (2009) and A Child's Garden: A Story of Hope (2009).
Many of Michael Foreman's books also feature Cornwall, where he lives when not in London.
Genres (in alphabetical order)Children, Illustration
BibliographyComic Alphabets: Their Origin, Development, Nature (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961 The General (joint illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961 Poems by Children 1950-61 (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962 The King Who Lived on Jelly (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (illustrator) Allen & Unwin, 1964 Huit Enfants et un Bebe (illustrator) Abelard-Schuman, 1966 Making Music (illustrator) Longman, 1966 The Bad Food Guide (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966 I'm for You, and You're for Me (illustrator) Abelard-Schuman, 1967 The Perfect Present (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1967 The Two Giants (author/illustrator) Brockhampton Press, 1967 Let's Fight! and Other Russian Fables (illustrator) Pantheon (U.S.), 1968 The Great Sleigh Robbery (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1968 Don't Rely on Gemini (jacket illustrator) Macmillan, 1969 Essex Poems, 1963-67 (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969 Adam's Balm (illustrator) Bowmar (U.S.), 1970 Horatio (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1970 The Birthday Unicorn (illustrator) Gollancz, 1970 James and the Giant Peach (adapted from part of the story) (illustrator) Penguin, 1971 Moose (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1971 The Living Arts of Nigeria (illustrator) Studio Vista, 1971 Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1972 Fischer vs Spassky: Reykjavik 1972 (illustrator) Penguin, 1972 Alexander in the Land of Mog (illustrator) Brockhampton Press, 1973 Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (illustrator) Allen & Unwin, 1973 Mr Noah and the Second Flood (illustrator) Gollancz, 1973 The Living Treasures of Japan (illustrator) Wildwood House, 1973 The Pushcart War (illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1973 War and Peas (illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1974 Private Zoo (illustrator) Collins, 1975 Rainbow Rider (illustrator) Collins, 1975 All the King's Horses (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1976 Hans Andersen: His Classic Fairy Tales (illustrator) Gollancz, 1976 Monkey and the Three Wizards (illustrator) Collins, 1976 The Stone Book (illustrator) Collins, 1976 Granny Reardun (illustrator) Collins, 1977 Panda's Puzzle, and his Voyage of Discovery (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1977 Teeny-Tiny and the Witch-Woman (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1977 Tom Fobble's Day (illustrator) Collins, 1977 Borrowed Feathers and Other Fables (joint illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1978 Mickey's Kitchen Contest (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1978 Popular Folk Tales: The Brothers Grimm (illustrator) Gollancz, 1978 The Aimer Gate (illustrator) Collins, 1978 The Princess and the Golden Mane (illustrator) Collins, 1978 The Selfish Giant (illustrator) Kaye & Ward, 1978 Alan The Three Golden Heads of the Well (illustrator) Collins, 1979 How to Catch a Ghost (illustrator) Holt (U.S.), 1979 The Girl of the Golden Gate (illustrator) Collins, 1979 The Golden Brothers (illustrator) Collins, 1979 Winter's Tales (author) Benn, 1979 After Many a Summer (illustrator) Folio Society, 1980 Alan Garner's Fairytales of Gold (illustrator) Collins, 1980 City of Gold and Other Stories from the Old Testament (illustrator) Gollancz, 1980 The Faithful Bull (illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1980 The Pig Plantagenet (illustrator) Hutchinson, 1980 The Tiger Who Lost his Stripes (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1980 Fairy Tales (illustrator) Pavilion, 1981 Over the Bridge (illustrator) Viking Kestrel, 1981 Panda and the Old Lion (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1981 The Nightingale and the Rose (joint illustrator) Kaye & Ward, 1981 Trick a Tracker (author/illustrator) Gollancz, 1981 Land of Dreams (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1982 Long Neck and Thunder Foot (illustrator) Viking Kestrel, 1982 Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (illustrator) Gollancz, 1982 The Crab That Played with the Sea (illustrator) Macmillan, 1982 The Magic Mouse and the Millionaire (illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1982 A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas (illustrator) Gollancz, 1983 Poems for 7-Year-Olds and Under (illustrator) Viking Kestrel, 1983 The Brontosaurus Birthday Cake (illustrator) Methuen, 1983 The Saga of Eric the Viking (illustrator) Pavilion, 1983 Treasure Island (illustrator) Puffin, 1983 A Cat and Mouse Love Story (illustrator) Heinemann Quixote, 1984 Cat and Canary (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1984 Panda and the Bunyips (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1984 Poems for 9-year-olds and Under (illustrator) Viking Kestrel, 1984 Poems for Over 10-year-olds (illustrator) Viking Kestrel, 1984 I'll Take You to Mrs Cole (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1985 Nicobobinus (illustrator) Pavilion, 1985 Poetic Gems (illustrator) Folio Society, 1985 Seasons of Splendour: Tales, Myths and Legends of India (illustrator) Pavilion, 1985 Shakespeare Stories (illustrator) Gollancz, 1985 Ben's Box: A Pop-up Fantasy (author/illustrator) Hodder & Stoughton, 1986 Early in the Morning: A Collection of New Poems (illustrator) Viking, 1986 Letters from Hollywood (illustrator) Harrap, 1986 Panda and the Bushfire (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, 1986 Tales for the Telling: Irish Folk and Fairy Stories (illustrator) Pavilion, 1986 Ben's Baby (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1987 Brontosaurus Superstar (illustrator) Magnet, 1987 Daphne du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre (illustrator) Gollancz, 1987 Fun (illustrator) Gollancz, 1987 Just So Stories (illustrator) Viking, 1987 The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr Willy Wonka (illustrator) Unwin Hyman, 1987 The Jungle Book (illustrator) Puffin, 1987 Edmond Went Far Away (illustrator) Walker, 1988 The Angel and the Wild Animal (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1988 The Curse of the Vampire's Socks and Other Doggerel (illustrator) Pavilion, 1988 The Magic Ointment and Other Cornish Legends (illustrator) Macmillan, 1988 The Night Before Christmas (illustrator) Viking, 1988 Worms Wiggle (author/illustrator) Carnival, 1988 Land of the Long White Cloud : Maori Myths, Tales and Legends (illustrator) Pavilion, 1989 Once Upon a Planet (illustrator) Puffin, 1989 The Sand Horse (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1989 War Boy: A Country Childhood (author/illustrator) Pavilion, 1989 Michael Foreman (author/illustrator) Beetles, 1990 Michael Foreman's Mother Goose (editor/illustrator) Walker, 1990 Michael Foreman's World of Fairy Tales (editor/illustrator) Pavilion, 1990 One World (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1990 The Brothers Grimm: Popular Folk Tales (illustrator) Gollancz, 1990 Busy! Busy! Busy! (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1991 Michael Foreman's Nursery Rhymes (editor/illustrator) Walker, 1991 The Boy Who Sailed with Columbus (joint author/illustrator) Pavilion, 1991 The Puffin Book of Twentieth-Century Children's Stories (illustrator) Viking, 1991 The Puffin Book of Twentieth-Century Verse (illustrator) Viking, 1991 The Young Man of Cury and Other Poems (illustrator) Macmillan, 1991 Fantastic Stories (illustrator) Pavilion, 1992 Jack's Fantastic Voyage (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1992 Spider the Horrible Cat (illustrator) Pavilion, 1992 The Arabian Nights (illustrator) Gollancz, 1992 The Echoing Green (illustrator) Viking, 1992 Wyvern Winter (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1992 A Fish of the World (illustrator) Pavilion, 1993 Funnybunch: A New Puffin Book of Funny Verse (illustrator) Viking, 1993 Grandfather's Pencil and the Room of Stories (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1993 The Beast with a Thousand Teeth (illustrator) Pavilion, 1993 The Long Weekend (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1993 There's a Bear in the Bath (illustrator) Pavilion, 1993 War Game (author/illustrator) Pavilion, 1993 Wyvern Spring (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1993 Arthur, High King of Britain (illustrator) Pavilion/The National Trust, 1994 Dad! I Can't Sleep (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1994 Sarah and the Sandhorse (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1994 The Fly-by-Night (illustrator) Pavilion, 1994 The Sea Tiger (illustrator) Pavilion, 1994 Wyvern Fall (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1994 Wyvern Summer (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1994 After the War was Over (author/illustrator) Pavilion, 1995 Peter's Place (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1995 Shakespeare Stories II (illustrator) Gollancz, 1995 Surprise! Surprise! (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1995 The Little Prince (illustrator) Pavilion, 1995 A Child's Garden of Verses (illustrator) Gollancz, 1996 Peter Pan and Wendy (illustrator) Pavilion, 1996 Robin of Sherwood (illustrator) Pavilion, 1996 Seal Surfer (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1996 The Little Reindeer (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1996 The Songs My Paddle Sings: Native American Legends (illustrator) Pavilion, 1996 There's a Bear in the Classroom (illustrator) Pavilion, 1996 Angel and the Box of Time (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1997 Creation: Stories from Around the World (illustrator) Walker, 1997 Farm Boy (illustrator) Pavilion, 1997 Look! Look! (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1997 The Knight and the Squire (illustrator) Pavilion, 1997 The Little Ships (illustrator) Pavilion, 1997 Chicken Licken (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1998 Cockadoodle-doo Mr Sultana! (illustrator) Scholastic, 1998 Jack's Big Race (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1998 Joan of Arc of Domrémy (illustrator) Pavilion, 1998 Kensuke's Kingdom (illustrator) Heinemann, 1999 Michael Foreman's Christmas Treasury (author/illustrator) Pavilion, 1999 The Little Red Hen (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 1999 The Merrymaid of Zennor (illustrator) Orchard, 1999 The Rainbow Bear (illustrator) Doubleday, 1999 The Shining Princess and Other Japanese Legends (illustrator) Andersen Press, 1999 The Story of Millennia the Angel: A Fable of Hope for a New Generation (illustrator) Orchard, 1999 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (illustrator) Pavilion, 1999 Billy the Kid (illustrator) Pavilion, 2000 Cat in the Manger (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2000 Memories of Childhood (author/illustrator) Pavilion, 2000 Rock-a-doodle-doo! (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2000 The Lady and the Squire (illustrator) Pavilion, 2000 Why Bear has a Stumpy Tail and Other Creation Stories from Around the World (illustrator) Walker, 2000 Out of the Ashes (illustrator) Macmillan, 2001 Saving Sinbad (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2001 The Wind in the Willows (illustrator) Pavilion, 2001 Tom and the Pterosaur (illustrator) Walker, 2001 Toro! Toro! (illustrator) Collins, 2001 Bedtime Stories (illustrator) Chrysalis, 2002 Cool! (illustrator) Collins, 2002 Dinosaur Time (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2002 Evie and the Man who Helped God (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2002 Michael Foreman's Playtime Rhymes (author/illustrator) Walker, 2002 The Last Wolf (illustrator) Doubleday, 2002 The Sleeping Sword (illustrator) Egmont, 2002 Wonder Goal (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2002 Bobby, Charlton and the Mountain (illustrator) Andersen Press, 2003 Cat on the Hill (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2003 Hello World (author/illustrator) Walker, 2003 Dolphin Boy (illustrator) Andersen Press, 2004 Gentle Giant (illustrator) Collins, 2004 Can't Catch Me! (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2005 Beowulf (illustrator) Candlewick, 2006 Fox Tale (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2006 Mia's Story (author/illustrator) Walker, 2006 Norman's Ark (author/illustrator) Andersen Press, 2006 Michael Forman's Classic Fairy Tales (adapter/illustrator) Pavilion, 2007 Say Hello (illustrator) Walker, 2007 Soggy the Bear (illustrator) Mabecron Books, 2007 Soggy to the Rescue (illustrator) Mabecron Books, 2007 Team Trouble (illustrator) Andersen Press, 2007 The Mozart Question (illustrator) Walker, 2007 White Owl, Barn Owl (illustrator) Candlewick, 2007 Kaspar (illustrator) HarperCollins, 2008 Soggy and the Mermaid (illustrator) Mabecron Books, 2008 The Lion Who Ate Everything (illustrator) Walker, 2008 The Little Dinosaur (author/illustrator) Walker, 2008 A Child's Garden: A Story of Hope (author/illustrator) Walker, 2009 Pirates Ahoy! (illustrator) Andersen Press, 2009 The Littlest Dinosaur's Big Advenure (author/illustrator) Walker, 2009
Prizes and awards1972 Festival International du Livre Aigle d'Argent Award 1972 National Art Library Illustration Award Horatio 1977 National Art Library Illustration Award Monkey and The Three Wizards 1980 Bologna Children's Book Fair Graphics Prize City of Gold 1982 Kate Greenaway Medal Long Neck and Thunder Foot 1982 Kate Greenaway Medal Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales 1982 Kurt Maschler Award Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales 1989 Kate Greenaway Medal War Boy: A Country Childhood 1993 Kate Greenaway Medal (shortlist) War Game 1993 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Gold Award) (9-11 years category and overall winner) War Game 1997 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Silver Award) (9-11 years category) The Little Reindeer
Critical PerspectiveMichael Foreman’s sumptuously colourful picture books for children convey a sense of innocent play, appealing to the child’s own developing senses of adventure, wonder and imagination. Journeying often provides the structure and imagery. In Hello World (2003), for instance, a bear in dungarees and a small boy go off ‘to see the world’ hand-in-hand, and are followed by kittens, puppies, ducks and other animals. They end up at night sitting on a hill, looking at the stars and moon (which looks back at them). The bear’s face, when first seen in white early morning light, looks very much like ‘Rupert Bear’. Nor might this be a coincidence: as Foreman explains in his memoir After the War was Over (1995), ‘I grew up on a diet of comics and magazines. As my mother ran the village shop, we sold almost everything, including Sunday newspapers …. [and] We had the … Daily Express because I liked to copy Rupert’. Such safe fabulous adventures may have provided an imaginative basis for the world created in Foreman’s art, albeit that in War Boy: A Country Childhood (1989) Foreman also describes a more earthy reality, as he and his friends explored bomb sites, the newly-liberated local beaches, and played games of Cowboys and Indians: ‘We were savages, chasing rabbits with knobbly sticks’. But his work often returns to issues of war, the environment, and above all a child’s need for freedom and adventure.
Over the past 40 years, Michael Foreman has become one of the best-known British writer-illustrators internationally, with more than 300 titles for both adults and children. He has enjoyed a long-standing involvement with the London-based literary magazine Ambit, and (a rather shorter spell) as an art director for Playboy. He is a superb colourist, typically covering the paper with luminous water-colour washes; blue seems his favourite colour, though greens, yellows, reds and pinks are used to equally great effect. He is skilled at suggesting vast skies and open spaces, and extraordinary panoramas, as in his Cat and Canary (1984) in which we see the skyscrapers of New York from the perspective of a cat riding a kite. Foreman’s style is especially suited to fables, folk and fairy tales, adept at suggesting menace, mystery, and the luminescent world of dreams. His Hans Andersen tales appeared in 1976, and his illustrations for Angela Carter’s Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (1982), have many memorable images. We see Blubeard’s wife discovering a room full of skulls, a bad-tempered prince transformed by a fairy into a lion-headed amalgam of creatures; Beauty and the Beast; ogres, witches and fairy castles. Michael Foreman’s World of Fairy Tales (1990) collects tales from a variety of cultures, with his own location drawings.
Other highlights of his oeuvre include Leon Garfield’s Shakespeare Stories (in two volumes, 1985 and 1994) showing dramatic scenes in colour plates and black and white free studies in line and wash; they succeed in conveying a range of moods and atmosphere, from the ghostly haunting of Hamlet’s Elsinore to the moonlit mischief of Titania, Bottom and Puck. Clever visual detailing abounds, as in Much Ado, with Benedick shown hiding behind an ear-shaped bush. The murder of Julius Caesar has a naked figure in agony, with orange blood and knives sticking out. In The Winter’s Tale jealous King Leontes is shown in sickly green between Polixenes and Hermione.
Foreman is a fine autobiographer. His memoir, War Boy: a Country Childhood, combines photographs and even adverts alongside his water-colours and pen-and-ink drawings. Amid wartime and food rationing, the influx of foreign servicemen, life goes on at his mother’s shop in the Suffolk village of Pakefield. It opens dramatically, a fire-bomb coming through the roof of the room where he is sleeping, a two-page picture illustrating the air raid: ‘the sky bounced as my mother ran … the sky flared red as the church exploded’. He records with simplicity and humour the impact of the arrival of the Americans; embarrassments with the outside lavatory; his first encounters with movies and bananas. Part of the appeal is that the adult artist is constantly negotiating with his childhood self, and it ends with a haunting image of the landscape, ‘the ghosts of us children in the fields and woods of long ago’. After the War was Over opens in the Summer of 1945, with victory bonfires, as the beach was cleared of mines and a wrecked landing craft ‘became our pirate ship’. Its theme is that of the boy growing up into the artist. The art college he attended was traditional, and he learned that ‘painting the same person over and over … teaches you about seeing and reading colour. I had no idea there were so many pinks, blues, yellows, ochres and mauves in flesh’. For War Game (1993), Foreman re-imagined the First World War, and its Christmas Truce scenes in the trenches (‘No Man’s Land’) re-appear in Michael Foreman’s Christmas Treasury (1999).
In complete contrast are exuberant works such as Michael Foreman’s Nursery Rhymes (1991). Alongside traditional rhymes are riddles, lullabies, nonsense verse, tongue twisters, and amusing pictures: cats in coats decorated with fish, a ship crewed by mice, with a duck captain. There are intriguing links from one rhyme to the next. ‘Mary, Mary, How Does Your Garden Grow?’ is joined by characters from other rhymes, and ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ goes up one side of a hill while Jack and Jill come tumbling down the other. Michael Foreman’s Playtime Rhymes (2002) is a delightful companion volume, containing over seventy exuberant ‘action rhymes’, and a cast of animals, who dance round the mulberry bush, walk through the jungle and go to the fair, do the hokey-cokey and join the Teddy Bears’ picnic. We see an elephant in a sailor suit, or walking along a spider’s web. Iona Opie, in her introduction to the Nursery Rhymes, rightly called Foreman an artist ‘who possesses his own spyglass to look into the furthest corners of the old nursery dramas, finding possibilities and consequences never imagined before’.
Dr Jules Smith, 2004
Author statementHe comes from the same wide skies and melting sunsets as the greatest of his fellow water colourists, John Sell Cotman, Peter de Wint and J M W Turner. But, unlike them, he paints more than landscapes. Michael Foreman paints dreams.
You will find his gentle tones and vibrant colours in bookshop windows, on classroom shelves, in a million children's bedrooms up and down the landscape and in dozens of lands too!
He can take us to the soaring mountains of New Zealand in his Maori tales (Land of the Long White Cloud), or to the ghastly wilderness of the No Man's Land of the First World War (War Game).
Somehow he brings us close, draws us into his pictures, involves us. His range, breadth and depth, are extraordinary, his interpretation breathtaking.
Michael Morpurgo
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