Meet the illustrator Chris Riddell

Images from The Letterpress Project

I was lucky to visit Jersey (UK) last month and by chance my visit coincided with the Jersey Festival of Words. Children's writers speaking at the event included Michael Rosen, Joseph Elliott and Chris Riddell. Chris presented several sessions including one that I attended in the Jersey Public Library. His focus was his book Once Upon a Wild Wood.

As the audience of young children and parents gathered Chris did some drawing which we could watch on a small screen. He drew a selection of familiar fairy tale characters such as Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast and the three little pigs. He then asked the children in the audience to identify the fairy tales. I loved the way he involved the children but also included observations and commentary that gave his adult audience quite a few laughs.  His own favourite fairy tale is The Twelve Dancing Princesses - he wonders what happened to all the shoes! 

You can see Chris drawing on this video. 

Then we were treated to a reading of Once Upon a Wild Wood. 

Bookseller blurb: Little Green Raincape is on her way to Rapunzel's party, deep in the wild woods. The way is long and dark, but Green is a smart girl. Smart enough to turn down apples offered by kindly old ladies, smart enough to turn down travel advice from helpful wolves, and above all, smart enough to solve a wealth of classic fairy tale problems - not least mend a lovelorn beast's broken heart. Once Upon a Wild Wood is a richly imagined story packed full of familiar fairy tale characters as you've never seen them before. Including Red Riding Hood, Thumbelina, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, the three bears, the seven dwarfs and many more!

His final words were music to my ears when he warmly recounted his time working in his own local library as an adolescent and his love of the way library shelves, unlike bookshops, can continue to hold every book treasure even when titles go out of print.

Something to watch out for in books by Chris Riddell - he always includes a hug!

One of his earliest books was published by Faber and Faber - it was a TS Elliott poem and the other two illustrators were Axel Sheffler (who went on to illustrate books by Julia Donaldson) and Errol le Cain. 

Chris Riddell was the Waterstones Children's Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal three times: in 2002 for Pirate Diary, in 2004 for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver, and for The Sleeper and the Spindle in 2016. Here is an interview with The London Magazine.

Chris Riddell and his wife live in Brighton. His daughter Katy Riddell is also a children's book illustrator, including of Pongwiffy by Kaye Umansky.

Here is a selection of books illustrated by Chris Riddell:

Oh, and I do need to mention that at the end of this session in the Jersey library, Michael Rosen arrived and he sat down and read his famous book We're going on a Bear Hunt in Jèrriais which is a language previously spoken on the island of Jersey. Read more here.