One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that Jan never treats children as children,” Walser said a few years ago. “It wouldn’t occur to him to talk down to them, he just behaves perfectly normally … When he works with children, he’s one of them.”

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Pieńkowski was born in Warsaw to a country squire father and a scientist mother. He was three when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, forcing the family to move around Europe before they eventually settled in England in 1946. Meg and Mog, completed in collaboration with the late writer Helen Nicoll, was a series of illustrated adventures about a hapless witch and her stripy cat. For his work as a children’s author, Pieńkowski was awarded the 2019 Booktrust lifetime achievement award, which has in the past gone to some of the greatest names in children’s books, including Shirley Hughes, Raymond Briggs and Judith Kerr. For unknown reasons, this plan never came through, and Absolutely instead teamed with Happy Life and Varcara to produce the series instead for a late-2003 delivery, with CITV purchasing UK broadcast rights. [3] The series was first broadcast in the UK within that time. [4]This story is a great springboard into the topics of Clothes, Food, Animals and, of course, Halloween. Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments Pieńkowski’s work was often inspired by his Polish childhood and experiences as a wartime refugee. His interest in paper cut-outs stemmed from his time in an air raid shelter in Warsaw, where a soldier had kept him amused by cutting newspapers into shapes for him. Don’t expect closure. Don’t be friends with Meg. She and her cat are mysteriously safe from the ‘accident’, but you end up trapped as a mouse for a FULL YEAR before she’ll even try to fix the situation! …Assuming Mog didn’t eat you. Pieńkowski said in an interview that the series gave him the opportunity to turn monsters from his childhood into harmless toys. He took his palette from comic strips such as Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace.

Meg and Mog - Wikipedia

Meg and Mog is a great book, full of great illustrations and fun bright colours. The book is easy to follow and has some really captivating colours. There are lots of comic style speech bubbles. Francesca Dow, the managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s Books, confirmed that he died on Saturday morning. The British author Ed Vere, who is godson to Walser, said: “Jan Pieńkowski lived an inspiring life dedicated to making books of the very highest standard – pioneering, intelligent, beautifully considered, and always created with a mischievous sense of fun.”I just had to included this as part of our spooky Halloween reads to our daughter, it's one that I can strongly remember from my own childhood.

Meg and Mog Book Series | LoveReading4Kids Meg and Mog Book Series | LoveReading4Kids

Meg and Mog is a classic series of children’s books featuring Meg, a witch, and Mog, her cat. The books are an excellent source of language for both first and second language acquisition. They can be enjoyed at any time of the year, not just Halloween! In this, the first story about much-loved characters Meg the witch and Mog her cat, the pair go off to a wild Hallowe'en party with all the other witches. But will the party go off with a BANG? I've commented before on how hard it is to review picture books like this - I mean, by the time I've got into my flow here I'll have used more words than are contained within this entire book. The critic Nicolette Jones, who chaired the judges selecting Pieńkowski for the award, said he “brought magic to children’s illustration”, while her fellow judge, the author SF Said, said: “Books such as Meg and Mog have shaped so many generations now that they have become part of the fabric of British childhood and culture in general.” A nice book to read to children around Halloween. Does any of them celebrate Halloween? What do they dress up as?In addition to the Meg and Mog series, Helen had a long and varied association with Puffin - as editor of the Junior Puffin magazine The Egg from 1977 - 1979, and as compiler of the popular children's poetry anthology Poems for Seven Year Olds and Under, illustrated by Michael Foreman. She owned and ran the audio company Cover to Cover for many years which produced the popular series of Puffin story tapes. Pieńkowski was also twice the UK nominee – in 1982 and 2008 – for the international Hans Christian Andersen award, the highest recognition available to creators of children’s books. This really brought out my childhood nostalgia though I can't remember ever reading it - the illustration style is just so of a time. My three year old liked it, especially the sequence of the witch getting dressed, which I could tell I would have loved as a kid too. Then she randomly got scared of it. I think this is a good accompaniment to the Funnybones series in that realm of harmless spookiness. Why are the UK authors so good at those books and in North America we don't really do them? But then also, WHY are there so many cats named Mog in the British Picture Book canon. Is this a name? Am I missing something? So strange.

Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll, Jan Pienkowski | Waterstones Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll, Jan Pienkowski | Waterstones

Originally published in 1972, this initial entry in author Helen Nicoll and illustrator Jan Pieńkowski's Meg and Mog picture-books, about a witch named Meg, and her cat Mog, pairs a simple text with boldly graphic illustrations that will grab the young child's attention. Following Meg as she gets up, gets dressed, prepares breakfast, and sets out (with Mog) for a witches' spell party, the narrative has a repetitive quality that will aid beginning readers, while the artwork is colorful (primary and secondary colors only), and makes use of simple shapes and clean lines.The Meg and Mog books have been enjoyed by countless number of children for many years. The illustrations are wonderful if not a little retro and the words are written in a very exciting and interesting way. Little ones will be sure to be reading along with you and the story line is always creative. Meg and Mog are off to a wild Halloween party with all the other witches, but when they cast their Halloween spell, something goes wrong, and the spell goes off with a BANG!