Category Personalities

What is the story of Quentin Blake?

Who is Quentin Blake?

An English cartoonist, illustrator and designer, Quentin Blake is known for his collaborations with children’s author Roald Dahl. Through his expressive style, Blake breathed life into Dahl’s endearing characters such as the gentle BFG, the graceful Matilda, and the toe-curling Witches. He also created other memorable characters in children’s literature. And there is no stopping the octogenarian. He continues to sketch, winning the hearts of millions of children even today.

Early life

Blake grew up in Sidcup in the U.K. with a pencil in his hand. A self-taught artist, he never went to an art school. He learned to draw on his own by poring over the technical plans, or drawings, of machines that his father, a civil servant, brought home.

At 16 while still in school, his first sketches were published in the Punch magazine. He entered the children’s book sphere when he illustrated “A Drink of Water” by John Yeoman in 1960. He went on to become the head of the illustration department at the Royal College of Art in 1978, and served there till 1986.

Friendship with Dahl

Blake became friends with Dahl when he began to draw the BFG, Dahl rejected the first two sets of illustrations and even sent Blake one of his old sandals with a note stating “this was what the BFG should be wearing and not the clumsy knee-length boots” that he drawn.

Blake went to visit Dahl at his home in Gypsy House, at Great Missenden, northwest of London. There he saw Dahl with his family, especially his granddaughter Sophie after whom the little girl in “The BFG” was named. It prompted him to re-think the character of the giant as he found a similarity between the BFG and Dahl. Both were “tall men who put dreams into the heads of children.” At first, he had drawn the BFG with a clown face. But he redrew him in a “gentler manner” and made him “grandfatherly.”

The making of Matilda

Like the BFG, Blake created the character of Matilda in his unique style. She was drawn repeatedly until her face exuded “not her intelligence exactly, but her magic powers”. Willy Wonka’s appearance was also Blake’s visualization. He drew Wonka like a sprite because everything that happened inside his factory seemed unreal, like a fairy tale.

Such examples show that Blake gave shape to Dahl’s characters in his own way and that he did not blindly follow Dahl’s instructions. Perhaps, that’s why Dahl entrusted only Blake with his work. Blake has illustrated almost all of his books. Dahl’s final book, “Billy and the Minpins” was the only children’s book Blake did not originally illustrate, but a new updated version includes Blake’s illustrations.

Centre for illustration

A new gallery dedicated to Quentin Blake will open in London in 2022. The Quentin Blake Centre for illustration will become the world’s largest public arts space.

The House of illustration in King’s Cross, founded by Blake in 2014, will make way for the new centre in Islington. The Quentin Blake Centre for illustration will be built at an estimated cost of whopping $8 million.

It will feature exhibition galleries, education studios, and events spaces.

It will also become a permanent home for Blake’s archive of over 40,000 drawings.

Oh really?

  • Blake has worked with other children’s literature authors, including Russell Hoban, Joan Aiken, Michael Rosen and David Walliams. His own heavily illustrated and quirky books include “Mister Magnolia”, “Zagazoo” and “Loveykins”.
  • Blake was honoured with a knighthood in 2013 for his work as an illustrator.
  • So far, he was illustrated more than 300 books, Blake also works with hospitals and mental health units, decorating buildings with his sketches.

 

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What is the inspiring story of Chloe Ardelia Wofford?

Growing up in the United States, Chloe Ardelia Wofford and her family struggled with racial prejudice. Her father was forced to flee his hometown on account of widespread lynchings of the members of the African-American community. A few years later, a landlord set fire to their house in Lorain, Ohio, because they could not pay the rent. While in college, she witnessed segregation in restaurants and buses. Wofford, who later changed her name to Toni Morrison, wrote about his African-American experience, particularly from a female perspective and became known as the champion of oppressed communities.

Her 1977 novel ‘Song of Solomon’ is one of her major novels. The book not only won the National Books Critics Award, but was also cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding her the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Her novel ‘Beloved’ inspired by the life of the escaped slave Margaret Garner was a critical success. The novel was later adapted into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey.

She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel ‘Beloved’ in 1988.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her novels “which characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”. She married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect and fellow faculty member at Howard University, in 1958. They had two sons and later divorced in 1964. Her son, Slade Morrison, worked with her on several books and literary projects.

Slade Morrison died of pancreatic cancer on December 22, 2010, at the age of 45.

Toni Morrison died of pneumonia on 5 August 2019, at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, New York City, at the age of 88.

 

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What is the inspiring story of Stephen King?

Stephen King’s name is synonymous with horror and suspense writing. His books are used as textbooks on how to write. And yet, King’s first novel, “Carrie”, which went onto to become a cult classic, was rejected by 30 publishers! King was about to give up and threw the manuscript in the trash. His wife, Tabitha retrieved it and urged King to resubmit it. The rest is history. King has since then published more than 80 books, many of which became bestsellers.

His mother did so many odd jobs to raise them and she even worked as a care taker in a nursery to meet the financial requirements of the family. The hardships faced by his mother left a strong impression on his mind which can be seen on his novels. In 1970’s, when he was working as a teacher at Hampden Academy, he became addicted to alcohol and his lifestyle changed. Though he was writing stories, his personal life was affected and his health condition too became worst.

Suffering like this for ten years, he finally gave up drinking and concentrated on his career. On 19th June 1999, he was involved in an accident and his situation became critical. Multiple fractures and the lung injuries forced him to take rest for more than three months and it took more than six months for him to become normal. He wanted to announce retirement during this period but the support from his family made him recover quickly and his successful writing career is still continuing.

 

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What is the inspiring story of Pratchett?

Pratchett was born in April 28, 1948 in Beaconsfield, the U.K. He had numerous speech impediments, which distorted his voice and made him the target of bullies at school. His condition made it difficult for him to read or write properly. In 2007, aged 59, Pratchett announced that he had a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s called posterior cortical atrophy. In his later years, Pratchett wrote by dictating to his assistant, Rob Wilkins, or by using speech recognition software. He wrote seven novels through the haze of Alzheimer’s. “Snuff’ is the third novel Pratchett wrote using voice-recognition technology rather than a keyboard; he was unable to touch type, although he could prod words out letter by letter.

He always made time for his readers, taking his guidance from his own childhood fan letter to JRR Tolkein. He attended fan events and stirred things up on the newly-forming internet, taking on marathon book signings all over the world. These events sometimes ran to more than six hours and stores would often have to send out for frozen peas to soothe his signing wrist.

He was appointed OBE in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in 2009. He won many awards for his novels but perhaps his most prized was the Carnegie Medal, won in 2001 for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. He also received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010.

 

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What is the inspiring story of R.K. Narayan?

R.K. Narayan, the man who brought this fantasy world to life, who inspired many endless quests to track down the town and its inhabitants, failed his English exam. He loathed physics and chemistry. Surprisingly, he cleared those two subjects, but failed in English, his favourite. Even then, he did not give up! Assuring his father that he would attempt the exam again, he spent the next year at home, reading and writing in earnest. Subsequently, he passed the exam in 1926. Few years later, unable to find a publisher for his first novel “Swami and Friends”, Narayan told his friend to throw the manuscript into the Thames river. Instead, the friend took it to Graham Greece, English novelist, who was so impressed that he recommended it to his publisher.

He has published numerous novels, five collections of short stories – A Horse and Two Goats, An Astrologer’s Day, Lawley Road, Malgudi Days, and The Grandmother’s Tale, four collections of essays – Next Sunday, Reluctant Guru, A Writer’s Nightmare, and A Story-Teller’s World, a memoir – My Days, collection of legends drawn from the Mahabharata and the Puranas titled Gods, Demons and Others, two travel books – My Dateless Diary and The Emerald Route (about Mysore state which had sketches by his younger brother, R K Laxman, the famous cartoonist). 

Swami and Friends and Malgudi Days were made into a highly successful television series in the eighties by the late Kannada film-maker Shankar Nag. Another of Narayan’s popular novel, The Guide, was made into a successful Hindi film by Dev Anand’s Navketan Films in 1962. 

 

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What is the inspiring story of Anne Frank?

Anne Frank spent over two years hiding in a secret annexe during the World War II. The 13-year-old poured her thoughts into her diary, which has become a symbol of hope and resilience. Despite fearing persecution by the Nazis, she wrote about forgiveness. “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by a grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem to absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” reads her diary. The last entry is dated August 1, 1944. All the family members were arrested and sent to concentration camps. A few months
later, Anne and her sister, Margot died of exhaustion while on their way to a camp in Auschwitz. Anne’s father Otto was the only survivor, who published her diaries.

The Franks enjoyed the freedom and acceptance they found in Amsterdam. Anne attended Amsterdam’s Sixth Montessori School, where she was a bright and inquisitive student with many friends of various backgrounds and faiths, according to “Anne Frank: The Biography” by Melissa Muller (Picador, 2014). Otto Frank founded a food ingredient wholesale company in Amsterdam.

 

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