Kate Greenaway Medal Winner – Catherine Rayner
June 26th, 2009 by Vanessa
We are delighted to be able to tell any readers who haven’t seen the latest news from the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal awards – probably the most prestigious UK awards – that Edinburgh illustrator, and loyal supporter of The Children’s Bookshop and the Fidra Gallery, Catherine Rayner has won this year’s Kate Greenaway Medal for her marvellous book Harris Finds His Feet. If you follow this link you can see her speech at the awards ceremony yesterday.
We’re huge fans of Catherine’s work and the painting from her latest book, Sylvia and Bird, that we bought at a show before Christmas is one of our most prized possessions. We’ve also just been sent a blad of her forthcoming title, Ernest and it’s equally marvellous and will help to build her reputation as one of the most imaginative illustrators and storytellers around. Cat’s sending work to our summer exhibition where I’m sure it will be very popular with customers, if only I can be firm and remind myself that I can’t keep all of the wonderful work that’s arriving every day!
My father-in-law, ex Vice Principal of the art school where Catherine trained, is not a man to praise work lightly and he summed up Cat’s work perfectly when he said that she had a wonderful way of drawing animals and giving them characters and personalities without a hint of twee-ness.