school.’
Remembering the
exhibition of Matisse paper cuts of a few years ago, it is, of course, remarkable what can be achieved just with paper and scissors.
A consistent thread in Jane’s work is a concern with the environment, human rights, diversity and inclusion. This can be tracked in some of the books she has illustrated for texts by other people: for instance, Mary Hoffman and Rhiannon Lassiter’s Lines in the Sand: New Writing About War and Peace; Kathy Henderson’s Lugulbanda: the Boy Who Got Caught Up in a War, and Kenneth Stevens’ Stories for a Fragile Planet. Two of her own books, Can You Catch a Mermaid and Ahmed and the Feather Girl, deal with themes of confinement and freedom. And Heartsong tells of a girl who is dumb but whose freedom comes through music and the benign confinement of an orphanage. All these concerns have been reflected not only in the books but in her work in schools and the community.
and modern: The Emperor’s Nightingale and other Feathery Tales; The Little Mermaid and Other Fishy Tales; and The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Hairy Tales. Here she used scraper board. ‘I had used it as a teenager in the seventies. It’s a board with black ink on it and there’s a layer of white clay underneath. You’re scratching with a needle, white into black, bringing light into the image. I completely fell in love with it.’
Belying the detail that Jane has achieved in the Boxer illustrations, the images that she was working with were tiny, sometimes as small as a postage stamp, often needing a magnifying glass. ‘David Bennett at Boxer is a wonderful designer and took them and added colour and blew some of them up to make the final illustrations in the books. The art and craft of wood engraving is complex and takes a long time to learn. This is a bit of a cheat way to do it.’ The result, however, is a brilliant tribute to that tradition.
Jane’s latest work for Boxer, The Elephant’s Garden, due to be published in April, is another departure. A picture book re-telling of an Indian folk tale in vivid colour, it uses bold paper cut collage against a white background. Jane has always used collage but often with a subtle use of tissue paper in ‘dreamy layers’ that is difficult, if not impossible, for the reader to detect. The Elephant’s Garden makes obvious and exuberant use of it. ‘It’s nice to produce something for younger children and, following the scraper board, which is so intense and detailed, it’s nice to do something where you are just cutting something up and sticking it on. Very infant
In 2005, Jane worked with Joyce Dunbar and hard of hearing children at The Meridian School in Greenwich. ‘There was wonderful teacher there called Nati White who was passionate about deaf children needing myth and magic and this really seized Joyce and I.’ The result was The Moonbird, the tale of a deaf prince who is taught by a mysterious bird to use his hands and eyes to communicate. And, from this experience, Jane was introduced to In the Picture, the project started by the charity Scope which aimed at encouraging the inclusion of children with disabilities in illustration for children. This is an interest she continues with the Inclusive Minds initiative. Presently, she is working with author Sita Brahmachari at the Islington Centre for Refugees: ‘Myself and the children have been working with silhouettes, shadow puppets and paper cuts. And Sita weaves what the children are saying about their work and what it sparks in their minds into a poem or a narrative.’
Jane finds this fascinating and stimulating: ‘the to and fro’ between author, illustrator and audience, in which everyone takes part in the creation of a story. She is now working with Sita on a novella set in the Orkneys about a mixed heritage family and which includes a refugee theme. She is especially pleased that, like Heartsong, it gives her an opportunity to illustrate a book for older children: ‘I grew up with them. Now, once again, there are wonderful novels with fabulous illustrations, like A Monster Calls.’
Finally, we talk about the seductiveness of her illustrations and how they invite the reader to enter into the world of the story: a thought Jane takes further: ‘One of the things that gives me huge pleasure is when primary schools use my illustrations as a starting point for children telling their own story. As a child I can remember having a Beatrix Potter frieze on my wall and just going into those pictures in my imagination. Fantasy journeys: going down the lane with Tom Kitten or into the dolls’ house. That’s what I would love to do for children. They go up the stairs, they enter that door, and they go into that garden.’ Much of our conversation has been about the relationship of text and illustration, of author and illustrator, and of the past and the present. All resolved, perhaps, in that obligation to the child reader and to the future.
A full list of Jane Ray’s books can be found here.
Clive Barnes has retired from Southampton City where he was Principal Children’s Librarian and is now a freelance researcher and writer.
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