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Associated Press
3 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Beloved children's author Allan Ahlberg dies at 87
LONDON (AP) — British writer Allan Ahlberg, author of more than 150 children's books including classics like 'Eat Peach Pear Plum' and 'The Jolly Postman,' has died, his publisher said Friday. He was 87. Penguin Random House said Ahlberg died on Tuesday. It did not give a cause of death. Ahlberg's books introduced generations of young children to reading through simple rhymes, sharp observation and gentle humor. Many were co-created with his illustrator wife Janet Ahlberg, who died in 1994. 'Peepo!' (1981) gave a baby's-eye-view of the world and was interactive in a delightfully analogue way, with peep-holes in the pages to spy the next scenes. 'The Jolly Postman' (1986) was even more inventive, incorporating postcards and letters in envelopes for children to engage with while they followed a letter-carrier delivering mail to fairy tale characters. Penguin Random House said it 'pushed at the boundaries of what it is possible for a book to be.' Ahlberg also wrote books of jokes, including 'The Ha Ha Bonk Book,' and poetry for primary school-age children, including 'Please Mrs. Butler' and 'Heard it in the Playground.' Born in 1938 and raised by adoptive parents in a working-class home in OIdbury, central England, Ahlberg worked as a 'postman, plumber's mate and grave digger,' according to his publisher, before becoming a teacher. He met Janet at teacher training college and the couple's first book, 'Here are the Brick Street Boys,' was published in 1975. Then came ''Burglar Bill' in 1977, about a burglar who steals a baby, and 'Eat Peach Pear Plum' in 1978, with its pages of intricately drawn nursery-rhyme characters. It won Janet the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration, one of the most prestigious awards in children's publishing. 'The Jolly Christmas Postman' won the same prize in 1991. After Janet died of cancer aged just 50, Ahlberg worked with illustrators including Raymond Briggs and his daughter, Jessica Ahlberg. For adults, he wrote a tribute to his wife, 'Janet's Last Book,' and two autobiographies: 'The Boyhood of Burglar Bill' and 'The Bucket.' Francesca Dow, head of children's literature at Penguin Random House, said Ahlberg's books have been described as 'mini masterpieces.' 'He knew that making it perfect for children matters, and above all that the very best stories for children last forever,' Dow said. 'Allan's are some of the very best – true classics, which will be loved by children and families for years to come.' Ahlberg is survived by his second wife, Vanessa Clarke, his daughter and two stepdaughters.
Forbes
32 minutes ago
- Forbes
Chappell Roan Rides ‘The Subway' On New Single
Hot off a breakout year last year and kicking off 2025 with her first Grammy win, Chappell Roan is setting the stage for her forthcoming sophomore album. The hit-making singer first gave a taste of her next project last year with 'Good Luck, Babe!' and earlier this year with 'The Giver," both top-5 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. For her latest release, Roan has returned with 'The Subway,' another link-up with frequent collaborator and Grammy Producer of the Year Dan Nigro. 'I saw your green hair / Beauty mark next to your mouth / There on the subway / I nearly had a breakdown,' she sings on the track. ''Til I don't look for you on the staircase / Or wish you still thought we were soulmates / I'm still counting down all of the days / 'Til you're just another girl on the subway.' When Roan looks back on how far she's come in just a few years in the spotlight, she remembers struggling to persevere on her path to the public eye. 'I kept hope alive because I knew I was really good. I knew I had to just give it one more year. And I got that courage by, honestly, just being in hell for a very long time. I was like, 'This sucks so bad, but keep going,'" she told W magazine in April. "Every day I would think, 'Keep going, even if there was no sight of any light at the end of the tunnel.' Zero! But I was like, 'What if it's just around the corner? What if I stopped the day before that something is meant to happen?"' So I just kept going, and here we are." Roan's Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things Tour kicks off Sept. 20 in New York and wraps up Oct. 11 in Pasadena.
New York Times
32 minutes ago
- New York Times
My Love-Hate Relationship With Hans Christian Andersen
When I was 7 years old, I disgraced myself. We were sitting in my second-grade classroom learning simple addition — that detail is seared into my memory, and just might have something to do with my appalling math SAT scores — and I started to cry. At first, it was silent weeping, fat tears running down my cheeks, but within moments, despite my panicked efforts to stanch the flood, I was sobbing, loudly. Everyone went quiet; 20 pairs of eyes — thrilled, exhilarated, confused — were turned on me. The teacher led me gently from the room to ask what was wrong. At this point I was too worked up, and humiliated, to answer. She suggested I eat lunch with her in the classroom while everyone else went to the cafeteria. In due course, we ate. Mrs. Lipton tactfully tried again. Was I upset about something going on at home? I muttered that I was, hoping my lack of detail would seem like obfuscation. Clearly it worked: My parents were called in for a conference, at which point the jig was up. The reason I had been crying was this: The night before, my mother had read to me 'The Little Match Girl' from a book of Hans Christian Andersen's collected stories. As I sat in class, I started thinking about the friendless urchin, burning her last match in order to warm herself and conjure memories of her late grandmother — only to be found, frozen, on the streets of Copenhagen on New Year's Day. And, well, I bawled. In his 1976 classic, 'The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales,' Bruno Bettelheim writes that a child 'intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue.' Unlike the Brothers Grimm, Andersen was mostly writing original work, but his nine volumes of 156 stories have rightly earned the sobriquet of 'fairy tale' in their ability to play on a child's elemental fears. Andersen — who died 150 years ago, on Aug. 4 — knew great commercial success in his lifetime. But he was lonely and unfulfilled. While he is generally acknowledged by biographers to have been gay (unlike in the Danny Kaye movie, in which he falls in love with a prima ballerina), there is little consensus on which, if any, of his relationships were consummated and which were merely intense crushes. For a while, Andersen and Charles Dickens were friends, but after Andersen paid the Dickenses a visit, and overstayed his welcome, the relationship fizzled. All of which may go some way to explaining the grimness of much of his material. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
