She enjoyed frequent visits to the theatre with her mother, which gave her a love for observing people and a desire to create. [18] Cottrell-Boyce, Frank (2 March 2022). "Shirley Hughes Showed Our World at Its Best". New Statesman . Retrieved 2 March 2022.

Shirley was just the person that those who loved her illustrations would expect her to be. Usually in a hat, she was effortlessly elegant and graceful, and wonderful company: funny, insightful and kind with a laugh that was both loud and heartfelt. Winifred Shirley Hughes CBE (16 July 1927 – 25 February 2022) was an English author and illustrator. She wrote more than fifty books, which have sold more than 11.5 million copies, and illustrated more than two hundred. [1] [2] [3] [4]In the next session you could talk to the children about being ‘out and about’ what they think it means and their experiences of being outdoors. She could create a sense of drama out of the smallest thing and resolve it without ever needing to deliver a message. Instead, she relied on children and their parents being largely sensible and so able to solve problems for themselves.

Shirley’s ability to draw children was spotted by a children’s books editor while she was still a student at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford. Initially, she mainly illustrated other people’s stories, starting with Noel Streatfeild’s The Bell Family in 1954, and including most notably Dorothy Edwards’s My Naughty Little Sister books when they were republished in the late 1960s. She also illustrated books by Alison Uttley, Ian Serraillier and Margaret Mahy. Much later, she wrote fiction: The Lion and the Unicorn (2000), a short novel with many illustrations for six- to eight-year-olds, and two wartime adventures, Hero on a Bicycle (2012) and Whistling in the Dark (2016). In 2012 she published Dixie O’Day: In The Fast Lane!, the first in an illustrated series created jointly with her daughter, Clara Vulliamy. For her last book, written at the age of 92, she returned to the story of the lost toy dog with a seasonal sequel, Dogger’s Christmas, published in 2020.

Hughes died on 25 February 2022 at her home in London. She was 94, and suffered from a brief illness prior to her death. [11] [14] She was paid tribute to by the UK's largest children's reading charity, the BookTrust, who said they were "devastated" by her death and that her "incredible stories and illustrations, from Dogger to Alfie and Lucy and Tom, have touched so many generations and are still so loved. Thank you, Shirley.” [26] Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, praised her, noting that she "began the reading lives of so many millions." [11] Awards [ edit ] For Dave in the book, and for a child hearing or reading the story and indeed for any empathetic adult, this is a moment of anguish. What comes into play here is basic feelings about attachment and detachment. Dogger is Dave’s “transitional object”, his mother substitute if you like, and he is forcibly separated from it. The work done by readers reading literature is done right here: we make connections between events, thoughts and emotions through metaphors and symbols. Dogger is Dogger, but what Shirley has shown Dogger to be for Dave, and what Shirley shows happens to Dogger, means a lot more. And being detached is a feeling that isn’t bounded by age, which explains why and how Shirley’s books are, as I say, so intergenerational. a b c d Emily Drabble, Shirley Hughes: I hope books survive, they are wonderful pieces of technology, The Guardian, 6 July 2015. British children’s author of the His Dark Materials trilogy and president of the Society of Authors Booktrust, the UK's largest reading charity, awarded Hughes their first lifetime achievement award in 2015. [9]