Michael Foreman (born 21 March 1938) is an award-winning British author and illustrator, mainly for children. He lives in London.
He has worked with Michael Morpurgo on many occasions, and has written books that are nearly all set in, or after, World War II, such as War Boy.
Michael Foreman is possibly one of the most popular and prolific illustrators of modern children's books. Born in Pakefield, Lowestoft, Suffolk in 1938,[1] he grew up near Lowestoft and studied at Lowestoft School of Art and later at the Royal College of Art,[2] where he won a scholarship to the U.S. After graduating, he lectured at St Martin's School of Art and then moved to Chicago where he worked as Art director of Playboy. He later returned to London and worked as Art Director of King. He returned to lecturing in 1967 and has since worked at the Royal College of Art, the London School of Printing and the Central School of Art.
His career as an illustrator began in 1961 when he illustrated the Comic Alphabet written by Eric Partridge and published by Routledge & Kegan Paul. Over the years he has illustrated books by Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Roald Dahl, Rudyard Kipling and many others as well as writing and illustrating his own books. He has also designed Christmas stamps for the Post Office and regularly contributed to American and European magazines.
Foreman has over 180 books to his name. His array of prizes including the Kate Greenaway Medal (twice), the Smarties Book Prize, the Kurt Maschler Award, the Children's Book Award, the Bologna Book Prize and the Francis William's Illustration Award (twice). Exhibitions of his work have been held in Europe, America and Japan.
His colorful book War and Peas is about a king (depicted as a lion wearing a suit of armor) who begs food from a rich nation, only to have to battle the Fat King's army men amid towering piles of oversized food. The book can be seen as a parody of the struggle between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.[3] Penni Cotton notes in Picture Books Sans Frontières the way that Foreman has the king and his impoverished subjects appear washed-out and faded in the beginning.[3]
External links
- A brief bibliography can be found at http://www.marchhousebooks.com/?page=shop/disp&pid=page_news6&CLSN_1948
- Michael Foreman at the Internet Movie Database
References
- ^ "Michael Foreman". Puffin Books. Penguin Books. http://www.puffin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000010989,00.html. Retrieved 2008-12-24.
- ^ "Michael Foreman". Contemporary Writers. British Council. http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=authC2D9C28A02840211B9QkG2895C82. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
- ^ a b Cotton, Peri (2000). Picture Books Sans Frontières. Trentham Books. pp. 89–90. ISBN 1 85856 183 3.
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