Picturebook talent: the 2019 Klaus Flugge Prize shortlist
The shortlist for the 2019 Klaus Flugge Prize was unveiled at a special event at Foyles, Charing Cross Road on 15th May. Six debut picturebook illustrators are in contention for the award, which recognises the most promising new talent in this field. The winner will be announced in September, meanwhile Martin Salisbury, Professor of Illustration at Cambridge School of Art, assesses the shortlisted books, and the state of picturebook illustration in the UK.
At such an exciting time in the evolution of the picturebook-maker’s art, this annual award is particularly significant, rewarding as it does the most striking new work in the field. Coming with a prize of £5,000 for best debut picturebook the award is a welcome boost for the chosen talented newcomer, providing precious support in building a career in the field. Created in celebration of the immeasurable contribution of the venerable Mr Flugge to this particular area of publishing, this is this the fourth year of the award.
This year’s exceptionally strong shortlist reflects the rich variety of work that is currently appearing in our bookshops, both in terms of content and stylistic approach. English language picturebook publishing has become increasingly ‘open’ in the last few years as a greater proportion of sophisticated overseas artists and influences are making a long-overdue impact on aesthetics in what had become for a while a lamentably insular section of the industry. Much of this is thanks to the growth of the smaller, independent publishers who have raised the bar in terms of content, design and production as the unique physical qualities of the beautiful, tactile book reassert themselves and make a welcome comeback in response to the rise of the screen. Another factor is the presence in our art schools of the many overseas students who come here to study illustration and who graduate with a strong ambition to be published within the English language market. Happily, an increasing number of these are featuring in publishing awards. Speaking of students, here I must ‘fess-up’ with a disclaimer: four of the six shortlisted this year are former students of mine from the MA Children’s Book Illustration course at Cambridge School of Art. But I am not involved in the judging process this year and wouldn’t dream of revealing which ones they are!
The contemporary picturebook has increasingly become a vehicle for strong messages and themes in relation to issues of our time. The best of such books avoid didacticism or crudely explicit polemic, leaving much unsaid and approaching their subject obliquely and poetically, leaving the young reader with food for thought whilst inspiring and entertaining. This year’s shortlist is full of such themes - social, environmental and political. But each of the books deals with its subject with lightness of touch and an element of humour. The list also reflects the increasingly specialised and integrated nature of picturebook-making as a visual, sequential artform that fuses authorship, draughtsmanship and design – each of the books listed is created by a single ‘maker’.
What follows is a short overview of the list, in no particular order.
Sam Boughton’s The Extraordinary Gardener deals with imagination and ambition in the context of ‘greening’ the urban landscape. A ‘yes we can’ dynamic reminds us that a little bit of creative thinking can allow anyone to contribute to the process of making the world that we inhabit a better place. The finale gives us an uplifting, spectacular fold-out explosion of colour. Boughton’s
12 Books for Keeps No.236 May 2019
artwork deftly combines watercolour washes with wax crayon, monoprint and photocollage to create a vibrant,
freewheeling
journey from dark to light. This is a celebratory book about planting seeds, both literally and metaphorically.
‘Charm’ is a word that is perhaps overused in the context of children’s literature but Eve Coy’s Looking After Daddy has it in bucket loads. A playful disparity between word and image is at the heart of the storytelling structure here, the word-reading giving us a child’s version of events while the picture-reading presents an altogether different reality. But it is Coy’s superb artwork that makes the book exceptional. Her secure draughtsmanship and use of colour perfectly capture character, movement and gesture in the English narrative, anecdotal tradition that is
exemplified
by the likes of the great Edward Ardizzone, but which is firmly rooted in observation of twenty-first century lifestyles.
The King Who Banned the Dark by Emily Haworth- Booth is very much a book for our times. This is a brilliant, thought-provoking exploration
of the idea behind that old
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