John Burningham has written and/or illustrated over 30 picture books that have been translated and distributed all over the world. These include his classic and muchloved children’s books and various books for adults including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming; Mr. Gumpy’s Outing; Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne; The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; Granpa; Oi! Get Off Our Train; The Time of Your Life; When We Were Young; Tug of War; Borka; Picnic, and The Way to the Zoo. He recently wrote an essay for our Open a World of Possible initiative, reflecting upon his early experiences with reading, which we've repurposed here. The full version is also available in our new Open a World of Possible book, which you can download for free here.
I was very lucky to have been a child when there was no television or digital games, apart from the few radio programmes that were for children. The great luxury was being read to by my mother before I went to sleep. The stories were a mixture of the classics and lavishly illustrated works, which we call picture books today.
Growing up during World War II, there were times when my family and I had to live in a caravan (trailer). I vividly remember hearing the rain thundering on the roof of the caravan and, if the story that I was hearing read aloud got a bit scary such as the rather frightening sequences in Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, it didn’t matter because my parents were never far away.
I learned to read quite late and got great pleasure from books. Today it pleases me a lot that I have managed to write stories for children that have been around for more than 50 years, have been heard over and over again, and are now going head-to-head with addictive computer games. I must be doing something right!
