“It’s the way she draws children’s curled fingers.” That’s what my friend Sarah Dudman said when she heard that the children’s author and illustrator Shirley Hughes had died. Sarah is a brilliant editor and just like a brilliant editor she had gone to the heart of it. The way Hughes drew those fingers – anxiously clutching toys, or happily holding hands – is at the core of what she did.
Love expresses itself as precision. And she really had precision. No one since Rembrandt has so perfectly captured the precarious half-balance of the toddler’s toddle. And I don’t think anyone ever has depicted ordinary domestic mess so honestly. The parents in her books are often slightly tatty and just a bit weary. That was partly why the books felt so welcoming – as though she was looking you up and down and saying, “Don’t worry, you’ll do.”
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