Talking about how she first became involved in children’s book illustration, Jackie describes learning from the line, colour and light of Brian Wildsmith’s work. Her move into children’s books was what she modestly calls an accident. Jackie had been illustrating for publications like The New Statesman and The New Internationalist, she tells how she had become known for coping with difficult subjects like child abuse in care. After an abortive pamphlet, Jackie went to Australia for a year returning with new vigour and working in full-colour watercolour. She painted greetings cards for Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Author Caroline Pitcher saw her work and Jackie was invited to illustrate Caroline’s book Jo’s Storm. Despite being imminently due to have a baby, it was a challenge Jackie accepted with relish.
‘It’s really important not to infantalise children,’ Jackie comments, ‘they are more than capable of dealing with sophisticated subjects and, in some cases, possible more so than adults. We have to trust their intelligence and integrity.’
Jackie feels there’s a special craft to writing picture books. ‘You have to leave space for the other creative person to step into. When writing and painting come together there’s a special synergy and connection which happens, that’s where beauty is found in picture books and that’s why the Kate Greenaway Medal is so important.’
As well as illustrating her own stories and those by other writers, Jackie has also written texts for other illustrators, Mrs Noah’s Pockets, with James Mayhew and the forthcoming The Secret of the Tattered Shoes, with Ehsan Abdollahi. ‘It’s a wonderful feeling to write a text and to see your words spring to life in colour, odd but brilliant. I love writing for other people to illustrate.’
Despite a gruelling schedule, she is enroute to Yorkshire to the opening of
the The Lost Words exhibition when we speak, Jackie is nonetheless brimming with energy for her new books. Books for Keeps No.237 July 2019 5
The Unwinding will be an exciting venture with Unbound, a crowdfunding publisher. The book will bring together a series of the paintings she works on between books. ‘There’s a lot to stress when you’re responding to teams of people,’ Jackie explains, ‘to unwind I paint.’ Jackie hopes the book will become a talisman for people to fall into, helping them to also unwind. Jackie has also illustrated a new edition of The House without Windows, a book written by a twelve-year-old in 1927 about a girl who cannot bear to be inside, who lives a wild life first in the meadows, then by the sea and finally by the mountains where she becomes a part of the natural world. It’s a book, Eleanor Farjeon reviewed, stating it was ‘nothing short of a miracle.’
There’s a pleasing sense of synchronicity to the fact Jackie is now working on a book of birds. She has researched everything from photographs to slow-motion film. It’s hard not to be reminded of six- year-old Jackie, enraptured watching her father painting a lapwing. Her hope is that the success of The Lost Words, a book where publishers granted her and Robert creative free-reign, might inspire greater trust for creators, allowing books which speak directly to the heart and soul of readers, gifting children something beautiful, a rich alchemy of words and pictures.
The Lost Words, Robert Macfarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris, is published by Hamish Hamilton, 978-0241253588, £15.99 hbk
Jake Hope is a reading development and children’s book consultant.
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