Most British readers will have first encountered Posy Simmonds‘ work through her cartoons in newspapers and magazines. Starting her career in the Sun (‘when it was a left-wing paper, briefly’) she went on to satirise the mores of Guardian reading folk as they navigated Thatcher’s Britain, in the brilliantly inventive strips featuring Mrs Weber and … Continue reading
In a bid for Christmas equality, Posy Simmonds has now give us two versions of Scrooge as a woman, most recently in her graphic novel Cassandra Darke, which casts Dickens’ miser as a misanthropic art dealer. “Women really aren’t allowed to be total rotters,” she told the Guardian. “There certainly aren’t many like Scrooge, who … Continue reading
She’s mastered the strip cartoon, broken ground with her graphic novels and taken picture books to the Oscars, but one place Posy Simmonds’ illustration hasn’t been seen much is in spot illustration for children’s novels. The reason for this may be that in Humphrey Carpenter’s The Captain Hook Affair (1979), she got to draw all … Continue reading
One of my biggest bugbears when reading a children’s book is running into a lengthy song or poem. No matter how artful the rhyme scheme, or witty the allusion they never fail to pull me out of the story. Even when read aloud, verse passages only serve to annoy. My impatient children often demand I skip these sections entirely. … Continue reading
While researching a piece on Matilda recently I came across the rather delicious fact that Roald Dahl had initially intended for her to be an absolute horror. His template for the character was another Matilda, the doomed anti-heroine from one of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children. This Matilda, so the subtitle explains, ‘Told lies and … Continue reading
In ‘Miss Honey’s Cottage’ a small, clever girl walks to her teacher’s home in the woods. Inside the hovel, kind Miss Honey prepares her pupil tea and bread with margarine. Chapter 16 of Matilda doesn’t have the most thrilling synopsis you’ll ever read, but this is undoubtedly one of my favourite chapters in all of … Continue reading
Christmas parties normally bring me out with a bad case of the bah-humbugs, but there’s one host whose gatherings I’d love to be invited to. Posy Simmonds, writer and illustrator of Tamara Drewe and The Chocolate Wedding, is a total genius when it comes to capturing the joy and frivolity of a fantastic bash in … Continue reading
