I Will Really Miss Jan Pienkowski (RIP)

How much do I love the work of Jan Pienkowski? Let us just say that when the sad news of his death reached me, and I decided to write something, I didn't have to look up how to spell his name.

One of the boons of having a sibling one decade younger was getting to read another generation of books for younger readers. And when my sibling received a copy of Haunted House by Jan Pienkowski, they loved it so much they wouldn't let anyone else play with the pop-up parts. So I had to get my own copy.

Pienkowski changed what was possible with paper engineering (& I particularly appreciated that the backs of the moving parts were painted rather than only the clearly visible parts as in most pop-up books I'd experienced previously). Haunted House is one of my favourite books, and I still enjoy moving the parts, and noting the UFO coming closer and closer until the alien bursts into the book at the end!

And let's not forget Meg & Mog (not to be confused with Judith Kerr's Mog, another great literary cat). I love the drawings. And when the sibling was about 5, we took them to the Unicorn Theatre to see the stage version with Maureen Lipman as Meg. Although, I remember that the adults seemed to be much more involved than the children they were treating - we were all shouting, panto style, "behind you!", whilst the kids were rooting around in the bottom of their popcorn buckets.

So glad to have still these beautiful books to enjoy. Sad that the genius that created them has left us. As the obits say, he found a way to take the terrible monsters from his childhood and turn them into harmless toys. My condolences to his partner, his family and friends, and all who will miss him.

the Times obit

The world of Jan Pienkowski in pictures from the Guardian

the Guardian obit