Alan Ahlberg
| Janet and Allan Ahlberg | |
|---|---|
|
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| Occupation | Writers |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Children's books |
| Notable awards | Two Kate Greenaway Medals |
Janet Ahlberg (21 October 1944 – 13 November 1994), née Janet Hall, and Allan Ahlberg (born 5 June 1938) were a British married couple who created many children's books, including picture books that regularly appear at the top of "most popular" lists for public libraries. They worked together for 20 years until Janet died of cancer in 1994. Allan wrote the books and Janet illustrated them. Allan Ahlberg has also written dozens of books with other illustrators.
Janet Ahlberg won two Kate Greenaway Medals for illustrating their books and the 1978 winner Each Peach Pear Plum was named one of the top ten winning works for the 50th anniversary of the Medal (1955–2005). In the US it was published by Viking Press in 1979 as Each Peach Pear Plum: an "I Spy" story; the national library catalogue summary explains, "Rhymed text and illustrations invite the reader to play 'I spy' with a variety of Mother Goose and other folklore characters."
Allan Ahlberg was born 5 June 1938 in Croydon. An illegitimate child, he was adopted and brought up in Oldbury in the Black Country. He has called it "a very poor working-class family" and identified himself as the baby in Peepo! (1981). He grew up with "no books and not much conversation".
Janet Hall was born 21 October 1944 in Yorkshire and brought up in Leicester. The Ahlbergs met while enrolled in a teacher training course at Sunderland Technical College and married in 1969.
Janet illustrated My Growing Up Book by Bernard Garfinkel (New York: Platt & Munk, 1972), which the US Library of Congress calls "A child's record of the things he has learned and done from the time of birth through age five. Also provides a place to paste photographs."
Their joint work began when she asked him, a primary school teacher, to write a story. The first three published Ahlberg collaborations appeared in 1976 and 1977, The Old Joke Book, The Vanishment of Thomas Tull, and Burglar Bill (1977).Vanishment was bound in hardcover with a dustjacket, while many of their early works were "pictorial laminated boards". For Each Peach Pear Plum (Kestrel), Janet won the 1978 Kate Greenaway Medal from the British Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. For the 50th anniversary of the Medal, a 2007 panel named it one of the top ten winning works, which composed the ballot for a public election of the nation's favourite.Each Peach Pear Plum finished a close second to the 1977 medalist, Dogger by Shirley Hughes; the margin was 1% of the vote.
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