This week we’re very excited to be publishing a new children’s book in association with Frances Lincoln Children’s Books; William Shakespeare: Scenes from the life of the world’s greatest writer by Mick Manning and Brita Granström.
We’re delighted to have worked with Mick and Brita on this unique project and are thrilled with the finished book. We love the attention to detail, especially in the depiction of Shakespeare’s family homes, as well as its humour and charm. Shakespeare’s life has been told for children many times before but not, we like to think, as fully or affectionately as this.
We invited Mick and Brita to share their creative process and to tell us their story of bringing Shakespeare to life.
Mick Manning and Brita Granström have been working together as author-illustrators for the last 22 years. They are best known for their picture-book approach to non-fiction with award-winning books such Taff in the WAAF and Tail-End Charlie (about Mick’s parents’ experiences in WW2), and a very visual biography series that includes Dickens and The Beatles. They have won many awards including the Smarties Silver award and are five times winners of the English Association Award. They were made Fellows of the EA in 2011 in recognition of their unique contribution to children’s non-fiction and have been twice short listed for the ALMA the world’s largest children’s literary prize.
Mick: With our book about William Shakespeare we wanted to show a real person who lived and breathed – and to do that we knew we had to stress the importance of his own childhood. Children love to hear that famous people were once children too – and it pours a little cold water on the myth that clever people are just born that way; that only the wealthy or the academic can succeed…
Brita: In one spread we portray Will on a school day: reluctantly waking up, getting dressed for school, having breakfast with siblings, walking through the village with his school bag…
“And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.”
… not much has changed in 500 years; although now children eat toast for breakfast not pottage and they wear hoodies and carry schoolbags with brand names on, we see our own boys set off unwillingly to school every weekday!
Later, in Will’s youth, we encounter the ‘lost years’ where no proven record of Will’s life exists, only theories. So in our book we show these various theories… it helps our audience appreciate that there are not always clear-cut answers.
Mick: Our illustrations are always very carefully researched to get them as historically accurate as possible and so we were delighted with the advice and enthusiasm we got from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for this book.
We appreciate that in our readers there is a spectrum of ages and abilities, both at home and in the classroom and we want them all to engage with our book. We try not to be too text heavy; each word has to earn a place in the book – but at the same time we need to be comprehensive. We use a fact strip device for extra detail; children can either dip in to or pore over, the facts, on their own, with mates, or, with a teacher in a classroom situation... Needless to say, there is also a lot of gentle visual humor too provided by Brita’s artwork. We were delighted when Simon Callow, actor and champion of Shakespeare in schools, emailed to tell us he loved how we had portrayed Will ‘the man’. Simon has kindly allowed us to quote him on the front cover.
Brita: Our next visual puzzle was how do you show Will’s plays and make them accessible to children? We chose to show as many of the main plays and poetry as we could fit in and have used sequential vignettes – a sort of comic strip. Romeo and Juliet is a good example of our approach. We were very keen to show Will’s plays, as they should be seen; an act of largesse: exploding with magic, humour, tragedy and drama; rowdy, cheeky and passionate, for EVERYONE and about EVERYMAN.
Mick: Brita and I are both exhibiting artists as well as book illustrators, (Brita exhibits paintings and I am represented by St Jude’s Prints) so drawing from life with all the freshness and vitality that brings is very important to our philosophy of image making. I taught Illustration at The Glasgow School of Art for ten years and spent much of my time there encouraging students to draw from life, taking students on drawing trips to places such as the Zoo and the Scottish Ballet studios. Brita has also spent her career drawing from life and she was able to inject that hard-won skill into her Shakespeare illustrations. She has brought Will and his world to life using coloured pencil and watercolour with added dip-pen and ink at times, especially for the bespoke hand lettering.
I think Brita’s version of Will is unforgettable and full of humanity. She has shown a keen empathy for his life that I think children – and adults too, will respond to. Other than Will himself there are all sorts of small, imaginative details in Brita’s artworks that I know people are going to love and that add layers of information: Will joking with his dad about a customer’s beard looking like ‘a glover’s paring knife’, Marlowe and Kyd in the Mermaid Tavern, listening as Greene grumbles about Will and calls him an ‘upstart crow’; Will visiting home to see his children and reciting his poem ‘Winter’ as they walk in the snow. ‘When icicles hang by the wall…’
I hope this book will help people of all ages understand a little more of the man behind the genius. We feel we have got to know him pretty well!
Visit our online shop to snap up your own beautiful hardback copy of William Shakespeare: Scenes from the Life of the World’s Greatest Writer.