Author and Illustrator Jan Pienkowski dies at 85

on Feb 21, 2022

Celebrated author and illustrator of Meg and Mog Jan Pienkowski have died aged 85. His illustrations were inspired by Polish childhood and his experience as a wartime refugee.
Pienkowski was an author of more than 140 children’s books.

Francesca Dow, the managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s books, confirmed the news on Saturday morning. His interest in paper cut-outs stemmed from his time in an air raid shelter in Warsaw, where a soldier had kept him amused by cutting newspapers into shapes for him.

Meg and Mog were completed in collaboration with the late writer Helen Nicoll. It was a series of illustrated adventures about a hapless witch and her stripy cat. Pienkowski emphasized in an interview that the series gave him the opportunity to turn monsters from his childhood into harmless toys. He took his idea from comic strips such as Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace. “Jan was one of the great storytellers: an exceptionally talented creator, who was led by what interested him, and who treated children as his equals,” Dow said on Sunday.

“There was an impatience and wonderful curiosity to him, as he looked for new ways to tell stories: drawing on his Polish roots with his cut-out and silhouette work; his extraordinary use of color; his pioneering interest in drawing on the computer; and of course his award-winning pop-ups which challenged publishers and printers to find new ways to create his books.”

She further added that poured over every detail meticulously “and yet achieved the near-impossible: simple, magical storytelling, which is why his books – such as my personal and our family favorites, the brilliant Meg and Mog stories – endure. I was very lucky to have had the chance to know him and to work with him.”

For his work as a children’s author, Pieńkowski was awarded the 2019 Booktrust lifetime achievement award, which has in the past gone to some of the greatest names in children’s books, including Shirley Hughes, Raymond Briggs, and Judith Kerr.

Pieńkowski was also twice the UK nominee – in 1982 and 2008 – for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children’s books. He won the Kate Greenaway award in 1971 with the writer Joan Aiken for their second collaboration, The Kingdom Under the Sea, which consisted of eastern European fairytales. He won his second Greenaway award in 1979 for the scary pop-up book Haunted House, which demonstrated his tendency towards the gothic.

He illustrated for Granta magazine and designed posters for university theater productions. Along with Meg and Mog and his pop-up books, he is also famous for his illustrations of fairy tales by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, The Nutcracker, and The Glass Mountain: Tales from Poland.

Fans paid tribute to Pieńkowski on social media following news of his death. The children’s author Christopher Edge wrote: “When I think back to my earliest memories of childhood reading, the Meg and Mog books shine bright. Thank you, Jan Pieńkowski.”