Harry the Dirty Dog by Margaret Bloy Graham and Gene Zion KIDS
Posted 13:03, 1 March 2015
Harry the Dirty Dog written by Gene Zion and illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham, published by Random House £7.99
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The children's illustrator Margaret Bloy Graham, who died this week at the grand age of 94, is best know for her pictures in Harry the Dirty Dog, probably. I say probably because she is a perfect demonstration of the absence of the illustrator's presence in so much of the book industry's data. Invariably only the author is named in Top 10/50/100 lists for book prizes or as buying guides for libraries and bookshops, and similarly the search engines embedded in the software which bookshops and other book providers rely upon to identify titles only index the author. What is an ilustrator to do? There is no simple answer (ask a Translator!). But Sarah McIntyre, herself a children's illustrator, has recently and rightly been making something of a fuss about this problem. See her twitter campaign #PicturesMeanBusiness and visit her website for more details www.jabberworks.co.uk/books/
And Harry the Dirty Dog is a brilliant and funny classic children's book. Every home should have one.