Niki Daly 1946-2024

"I simply love drawing, and I feel like I just need to make pictures, I don't need to write," explained Daly, who credits his ability to "steal with [his] eyes" as one of the reasons for his success. 

"I have a highly developed visual memory... I steal with my eyes. Just by seeing a child playing imaginatively, thinking they are a superhero or fairy... I can easily turn that into some kind of story." 

Niki Daly was a South African author-illustrator whose picture books celebrated the imaginative powers of children and their magnificent everyday lives. Daly first became involved in drawing by using pencil stubs handed down from an uncle who painted watercolour pictures. Daly travelled to London at the age of twenty-four in order to pursue a career in singing and song writing and he found work as a commercial artist, which eventually led to illustration for children’s books. Notable about his style are his abilities to view the world from a child’s perspective and to see the world in a rainbow of shades, reflective of multicultural modern South Africa. In books such as Not So Fast, Songololo, Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky, The Boy on the Beach, and Jamela’s Dress, Daly looks at the day-to-day interactions of the myths that shape black South African reality. In 1980 Niki Daly and his family returned to South Africa after ten years living abroad. Source: Brightstar

Here is a video of Niki reading his book On my Papa's shoulders.

Read more here.

He was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Here is a tribute from IBBY.uk.

Through sparkling text and his fresh approach to colour and line, and a knack for pinning down small domestic details, he gave the world stories imbued not only with joy but humanity… stories that bridged multi-generational gaps… a little boy buying a new pair of shoes with his grandmother, a girl tap-dancing alongside her beloved grandfather, a young herdboy daring to dream of a big future, an exuberant boy getting lost on a beach, the delightful Jamela teetering around in her mother’s red shoes wrapped in her mother’s precious cloth… stories that turn everyday experiences into the extraordinary. Niki’s innate ability was to capture the essence of a child no matter what their nationality.

Here comes Lolo

The Jamela book series by Niki Daly should be in every school library but sadly nearly all of them are out of print.

"When I came back to South Africa and looked at the books that were available then in the 80s there was very little representation of black lives, and because I come from a working-class background, I just understood and appreciated the resourcefulness of children who don't have everything,"

Read this interview with Niki Daly - you can also see his first book from 1978.

Libraries, these days, are fun; made so by librarians who are my favorite people because I have never met a librarian who does not have sparkle and an infectious enthusiasm for engendering a love of books in children. They are angels in their ability to guide a child to exactly the book they need at whatever stage they are at. So, make visiting your library with your children a regular event. I encourage working parents to ignore the terrible news on TV when they return home from a stressful day’s work. Kick off your shoes! Sit side by side and read to your child. Journey together through a story that connects both you and child to your inner selves – this is true bonding.