Helen Oxenbury is a British illustrator of children’s books, who has twice won the Greenaway medal. Nobody has yet won it three times. She spent some of the early part of her career working in theatre design, and turned to illustrating children’s books after marrying fellow illustrator John Burningham.
I’m familiar with Helen Oxenbury mostly through books I’ve read with my children when they were young, and with my grandchildren. I’ve chosen to copy one of her illustrations from Alice through the Looking Glass. I’ve written before about my love of and fascination with the Alice books. While I will always love John Tenniel’s original illustrations, and they will always be the archetypal images of the books as far as I am concerned, Helen Oxenbury’s illustrations brought something new and interesting to the stories for me. Her Alice is a modern girl, which if anything makes her seem even more out of place amongst the strangeness of Wonderland and the Looking Glass world. Like Sir Quentin Blake, Helen Oxenbury is still going strong.
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