As a child I was rather quiet and introverted – most of the time – and carried on like that as a teenager. I suppose I was quite dreamy but certainly not naughty or diffi cult, so my parents got off lightly. My most vivid childhood memories are of holidays with my family, beside the sea in Denmark. The fi ve of us were all together – my mother, father, brother and sister. I liked spending time on the beach, although I couldn’t swim at the time. I probably spent more time messing about in the sand. I didn’t have many picture books when I was little. I remember reading Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comics. I still have some of my Petzi books, which were in comic book form, but without speech bubbles. Petzi was a little Danish bear who wore polka dot trousers and red braces and travelled the world on adventures with his three animal friends – a penguin, a turtle and a pelican – for company. Like most German children of my generation I grew up with Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer [available in English as Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver]. I saw it as a puppet
LIVING LEGEND
Illustrator Axel Scheffl er created loveable beast T e Gruff alo with picture book author Julia
Donaldson. He recalls a German childhood and his fi rst sketches
fi lm fi rst on TV and then got the book. I can’t remember when I fi rst started drawing. The oldest existing drawings are from when I was fi ve or six and they’re of people, animals, ships or treasure maps. I still have a self-
portrait [pictured top left], which I drew at school, so I was probably a little older when I drew that. I don’t look very diff erent now. I read with my daughter almost every night. She likes choosing books that I don’t like, just to tease
me. But in many cases we have the same taste. We like [Shrek creator] William Steig’s stories. She speaks English, German and French (her mother is French) but I am only allowed to read books in German and English, because my French isn’t good enough. I read the bedtime stories most nights as she knows she can get four stories out of me without too much persuasion. The books are usually followed by little stories I must make up off the top of my head, often featuring baby penguins. When it comes to my own bedtime reading, I have a pile of books and papers; there are a lot of books that I have started and haven’t fi nished. At the moment I am reading a new German translation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. I fi rst read it about 20 years ago but this is a new German translation by Elisabeth Edl which has received a lot of critical acclaim.
Axel's fi rst book with Julia Donaldson, A Squash and a Squeeze (Macmillan Children's Books), is out now in an anniversary edition