Michael Foreman

Michael Foreman (born 21 March 1938) is a British author and illustrator, one of the best-known and most prolific creators of children's books. He won the 1982 and 1989 Kate Greenaway Medals for British children's book illustration and he was a runner-up five times.

For his contribution as a children's illustrator he was UK nominee in 1988 and again in 2010 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books.

Life

Foreman was born and grew up in Pakefield, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, where his mother kept the village shop. His father died a month before he was born. When he was three, the family home was hit by a German bomb, but he survived along with his mother and two older brothers. He studied at Lowestoft School of Art, and later in London at the Royal College of Art, where he won a scholarship to the United States.

Foreman was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Approach to illustration

Foreman learned to respond instantly to text as an art student. Having drawn for the newspapers and for the police, drawing female suspects when Identikit only catered for men, he gained valuable drawing experience. A travel scholarship took him all around the world, drawing landscapes, architecture and wildlife. Although many of his books feature luminous watercolours, it is the drawing that he sees as vital: "It's all in the drawing and illustration. It's a question of creating another world, believable in its own right. I think I was very lucky to have started art school so young when they actually taught Art. It was a rigorous training – not just painting and drawing from life – but hours of anatomy and perspective. ... it really taught you to understand what you were looking at." His aim in illustration is to make the worlds created believable, real: "I keep trying to make things more real, not in a literal photographic sense, but in an emotional sense, telling a story by capturing the essence of the situation, giving it some meaning."

Selected works

1960s

1961 Comic Alphabets: Their origin, development, nature (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul (ISBN 978-0-7100-1939-4), by Eric Partridge

1961 The General (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul, by Jane Charters

1961 The King Who Lived on Jelly (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul

1962 Poems by Children 1950–61 (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul

1966 Huit Enfants et un Bebe (illustrator) Abelard-Schuman

1966 Making Music (illustrator) Longman

1966 The Bad Food Guide (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul

1967 I'm for You, and You're for Me (illustrator) Abelard-Schuman

1967 The Perfect Present (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1967 The Two Giants (author/illustrator) Brockhampton Press

1968 Let's Fight! and Other Russian Fables (illustrator) Pantheon (U.S.)

1968 The Great Sleigh Robbery (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1969 Essex Poems, 1963–67 (illustrator) Routledge & Kegan Paul

1970s

1970 Adam's Balm (illustrator) Bowmar (U.S.)

1970 Horatio (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1970 The Birthday Unicorn (illustrator) Gollancz

1971 James and the Giant Peach (an adaptation) (illustrator) Penguin

1971 Moose (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1971 The Living Arts of Nigeria (illustrator) Studio Vista

1972 Dinosaurs and all that rubbish (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton, adapted into an online series and musical theatre production by Roustabout Theatre in 2021

1973 Alexander in the Land of Mog (illustrator) Brockhampton Press

1973 Mr Noah and the Second Flood (illustrator) Gollancz

1973 The Living Treasures of Japan (illustrator) Wildwood House

1973 The Pushcart War (illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1974 War and Peas (writer and illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1975 Private Zoo (illustrator) Collinsn

1975 Rainbow Rider (illustrator) Collins

1976 Hans Andersen: His Classic Fairy Tales (illustrator) Gollancz

1976 Monkey and the Three Wizards (illustrator) Collins

1976 The Stone Book (illustrator) Collins

1977 Granny Reardun (illustrator) Collins

1977 Panda's Puzzle (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1977 Teeny-Tiny and the Witch-Woman (illustrator) Andersen Press

1977 Tom Fobble's Day (illustrator) Collins

1978 Borrowed Feathers and Other Fables (illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1978 Mickey's Kitchen Contest (illustrator) Andersen Press

1978 Popular Folk Tales (illustrator) Gollancz, newly translated from Brothers Grimm by Brian Alderson —a Greenaway runner up,

1978 The Aimer Gate (illustrator) Collins

1978 The Princess and the Golden Mane (illustrator) Collins,

1978 The Selfish Giant (illustrator) Kaye & Ward

1979 Alan The Three Golden Heads of the Well (illustrator) Collins

1979 How to Catch a Ghost (illustrator) Holt (U.S.)

1979 The Golden Brothers (illustrator) Collins

1979 Winter's Tales (author) Benn

1980s

1980 After Many a Summer (illustrator) Folio Society

1980 Alan Garner's Fairytales of Gold (illustrator) Collins

1980 City of Gold and Other Stories from the Old Testament (illustrator) Gollancz, retold by Peter Dickinson, who won the Carnegie Medal —a Greenaway runner up (Highly Commended),

1980 The Faithful Bull (illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1980 The Pig Plantagenet (illustrator) Hutchinson

1980 The Tiger Who Lost his Stripes (illustrator) Andersen Press

1981 Fairy Tales (illustrator) Pavilion, by Terry Jones

1981 Over the Bridge (illustrator) Viking Kestrel

1981 Panda and the Old Lion (author/illustrator) Hamish Hamilton

1981 The Nightingale and the Rose (illustrator) Kaye & Ward

1981 Trick a Tracker (author/illustrator) Gollancz

1982 Land of Dreams (author/illustrator) Andersen Press

1982 Long Neck and Thunder Foot (illustrator) Viking Kestrel, by Helen Piers —joint winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal for British children's book illustration