The Bear

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The story of a little girl who befriends a mischievous polar bear, this playful, funny and heart-warming tale is one of imagination and growing up. Raymond Briggs was born in London in 1934, and studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Slade School of Art, London. Briggs won the 1992 Kurt Maschler Award, or the "Emil", both for writing and for illustrating The Man, a short graphic novel featuring a boy and a homunculus. The award annually recognised one British children's book for integration of text and illustration. [32] His graphic novel Ethel & Ernest, which portrayed his parents' 41-year marriage, won Best Illustrated Book in the 1999 British Book Awards. In 2016, it was turned into a hand-drawn animated film. [33] In 2012, he was the first person to be inducted into the British Comic Awards Hall of Fame. [34] a b c "Kate Greenaway Medal". 2007?. Curriculum Lab. Elihu Burritt Library. Central Connecticut State University ( CCSU). Retrieved 25 June 2012.

An Animated tale in the style of Raymond Briggs'"The Snowman" and "Father Christmas", This tale is about a girl named tilly who visits the zoo and accidentally drops her teddy bear into the polar bear exhibit. Crying herself to sleep she wakes to find the polar bear in her room with he teddy bear. Tilly cares for the polar bear and hides it from her parents, which is no small feet. But he call of the wild bear constallation takes her on an adventure accross the night sky. Peter and the Piskies: Cornish Folk and Fairy Tales (1958), retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders and illustrated by Briggs [44] After briefly pursuing painting, he became a professional illustrator, [1] and soon began working in children's books. In 1958, he illustrated Peter and the Piskies: Cornish Folk and Fairy Tales, a fairy tale anthology by Ruth Manning-Sanders that was published by Oxford University Press. They would collaborate again for the Hamish Hamilton Book of Magical Beasts ( Hamilton, 1966). In 1961, Briggs began teaching illustration part-time at Brighton School of Art, which he continued until 1986; [14] [15] one of his students was Chris Riddell, who went on to win three Greenaway Medals. [16] Briggs was a commended runner-up for the 1964 Kate Greenaway Medal ( Fee Fi Fo Fum, a collection of nursery rhymes) [17] [a] and won the 1966 Medal for illustrating a Hamilton edition of Mother Goose. [1] According to a retrospective presentation by the librarians, The Mother Goose Treasury "is a collection of 408 traditional and well loved poems and nursery rhymes, illustrated with over 800 colour pictures by a young Raymond Briggs". [3]Briggs stated that he used to be a staunch supporter of the Labour Party, although he lost faith in the party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. [31]

D. Martin, "Raymond Briggs", in Douglas Martin, The Telling Line: Essays on Fifteen Contemporary Book Illustrators (Julia MacRae Books, 1989), pp.227–42a b Milligan, Mercedes (10 August 2022). " 'The Snowman' Creator Raymond Briggs Dies Age 88". Animation Magazine . Retrieved 11 August 2022. We publish a Literature Newsletter when we have news and features on UK and international literature, plus opportunities for the industry to share. a b Bailey, Jason M. (10 August 2022). "Raymond Briggs, Who Drew a Wordless 'Snowman,' Dies at 88". The New York Times . Retrieved 10 August 2022. Ramachandran, Naman (10 August 2022). "Raymond Briggs, 'The Snowman' Creator, Dies at 88". Variety . Retrieved 11 August 2022. Anjorin, Israel (10 August 2022). "Raymond Briggs, a Snowman author has passed away at age 88 – Death". SNBC13.com . Retrieved 11 August 2022.

The first three important works that Briggs both wrote and illustrated were in comics format rather than the separate text and illustrations typical of children's books; all three were published by Hamish Hamilton. Father Christmas (1973) and its sequel Father Christmas Goes on Holiday (1975); both feature a curmudgeonly Father Christmas who complains incessantly about the "blooming snow". For the former, he won his second Greenaway. [1] Much later they were jointly adapted as a film titled Father Christmas. The third early Hamilton "comics" was Fungus the Bogeyman (1977), featuring a day in the life of a working class bogeyman. [18] Tilly soon finds out that a big bear can cause big problems - he takes a LOT of looking after! When she describes the bear's latest antics to her parents they think he's a figment of her imagination - but is he? This festive season, enjoy Pins and Needles' heart-warming live stage show of the classic children’s book by Raymond Briggs, The Bear, featuring dazzling puppetry, delicious music and dozens of laughs. Raymond Briggs, the British author and illustrator of the classic children’s books Father Christmas (1973), Fungus the Bogeyman (1977), and The Snowman (1978), died on 9 August, aged 88. Ethel & Ernest (1986), was an affectionate biography of his parents Ethel Bowyer, a lady’s maid turned housewife, and Ernest Briggs, a milkman. All Briggs’s books have an underlying empathy—sometimes explicit, sometimes concealed, even to the author, until critics and readers discovered it—for the life, loves and mortality of his working-class Londoner parents.

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Only Chris Riddell has won three Greenaways. Among the fourteen illustrators with two Medals, Briggs is one of seven with one book named to the top ten (1955–2005) and also one of seven with at least one Highly Commended runner-up (1974–2002), led by Helen Oxenbury with two Medals and four HC. Briggs's mature style, favouring crayon as a medium over earlier experiments in watercolour, has a fine-textured patina and muted palette that is as distinctive and unmistakable as the strongly outlined, vividly coloured images of two internationally popular Francophone comic-book series—Hergé’s Tintin adventures (starting in 1929) and René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix books (1959-2015)—both of which are reminiscent of the style and primary tones of the 19th-century posters and short books of the French publisher Imageries d’Epinal. Jim and the Beanstalk (1970) marked the first occasion that Briggs both author and illustrated a book. This was followed by Father Christmas (1973) in which Briggs started to use a comic strip format in his picture books.

Briggs’s life moved into a minor key in the 2010s with the death in 2015 of his partner of 40 years Liz Benjamin, who had brought a stepson, a stepdaughter and stepgrandchildren into his life. He remained as involved as ever in his writing and adaptations of his work, and was the executive producer on the film of Ethel & Ernest, although his health kept him from attending as many production sessions as he would have liked. One of his final works was Time for Lights Out (2019), which he described as a "big fat book on old age and death". Briggs won the 1966 and 1973 Kate Greenaway Medals from the British Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. [3] [4] For the 50th anniversary of the Medal (1955–2005), a panel named Father Christmas (1973) one of the top-ten winning works, which composed the ballot for a public election of the nation's favourite. [5] For his contribution as a children's illustrator, Briggs was a runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1984. [6] [7] He was a patron of the Association of Illustrators. [8] Early life [ edit ] Walker, Emily (24 December 2010). "Snowman author says: "I hate Christmas" (From The Argus)". Theargus.co.uk . Retrieved 23 July 2012. Hello Yellow - 80 Books to Help Children Nurture Good Mental Health and Support With Anxiety and Wellbeing -The show won a Peabody Award in 1998. [2] In 2000, it won the Golden Butterfly Award for the best short film in the international cinema competition of the 15th Isfahan International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Iran. [3] Author-illustrator Raymond Briggs dies age 88:: NEWS". School Library Association . Retrieved 11 August 2022.