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Raymond Briggs

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( 32 ratings, 6 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Raymond Briggs explores the groundbreaking career of a celebrated illustrator and author who transformed children's picture books. Covering sixty years of work, the book delves into themes of class, family, love, and loss with a unique blend of humour and melancholy. It showcases Briggs's ability to engage both children and adults with iconic works like Father Christmas, The Snowman, and When the Wind Blows, highlighting his versatility and emotional depth.
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Format: Hardback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Fans of children’s literature, illustration art enthusiasts, and readers interested in the cultural impact of storytelling will appreciate this insightful and visually rich study.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

‘Briggs’s pencil has drawn everything about being human – the comic, the tragic; passion, tenderness, fear, anger, joy, bogeys ... slime’ Posy Simmonds

'Briggs' pencil has drawn everything about being human - the comic, the tragic, passion, tenderness, fear, anger, joy, bogeys ... slime' Posy Simmonds

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Raymond Briggs has changed the face of children's picture books with his innovations in both form and subject. Stylistically versatile, he has illustrated around sixty books, twenty of them with his own text, and first became a household name in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a handful of books—Father Christmas, Fungus the Bogeyman, The Snowman, When the Wind Blows—that were both entertaining and subversive, appealing to both children and adults.

The refrains of his work are class, family, love, and loss. Nevertheless, his default mode of expression is humour. Briggs is always funny, and the balance between this and melancholy is his defining characteristic, though his style ranges from the romantic to the grotesque, from the fanciful to the direct.

Encompassing sixty years of Raymond Briggs's work, from political picturebooks to children's classics, this study explores his themes of class, family, and loss, and how he demonstrates both emotional power and great technical skill.

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  • Raymond Briggs
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Philip Pullman heralds it as a celebration of illustrators’ work, while Chris Riddell praises it as an inspiring tribute to a great illustrator. The Financial Times describes it as a delightful biography that captures Briggs’s creative spirit within the context of English social history.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780500022184

Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 01 October 2020

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Thames & Hudson Ltd

Illustration: 107 Illustrations, color

Contributors:

  • Consultant editor Quentin Blake
  • Series edited by Claudia Zeff

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 187.0mm

Height: 245.0mm

Weight: 520g

Pages: 112

About the Author

Nicolette Jones is Children's Book Editor of the Sunday Times, and has been a reviewer, feature-writer, diarist, sub-editor and book-prize judge. In 2012 she was shortlisted for the Eleanor Farjeon award for her 'outstanding contribution to the world of children's books'. She has worked for all the British national broadsheets and the book trade press, and won Maritime Literature Prizes in the UK and the US.

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