About Helen Oxenbury

Helen Oxenbury was born in Ipswich in 1938. From an early age she loved drawing. After school she went to the Ipswich School of Art before moving to London to study at the Central School of Art and Design where she met her husband, the artist and illustrator John Burningham.

She worked originally in theatre in the UK and Israel and then went on to create cards for Jan Pienkowski’s ground-breaking stationery company Gallery Five. The images contributed by artists were influenced by pop art and new simplified graphic design.

Her earliest books, including an illustrated folk tale, Tolstoy’s retelling of The Great Big Enormous Turnip, were colourful and stylised. This was also true of her next two books, one illustrating Edward Lear’s The Quangle Wangle’s Hat and the other Margaret Mahy’s The Dragon of an Ordinary Family. These vibrant books impressed the judges of the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal judged by librarians and Helen was awarded the annual prize for illustration for two books instead of choosing between them.

She was then approached by Sebastian Walker to publish picture books and board books for his new publishing company. Together with Walker’s art director Amelia Edwards, they brought about the board book revolution with Helen’s realisation that babies are interested in images of other babies, introducing realism, humour and tenderness to her depictions, which became a sequence of 14 bestselling books.

Oxenbury’s books have a gentleness and sense of fun but are also groundbreaking. Her baby books have a place in the history of civil rights. Farmer Duck, now a classic published by Walker Books from Martin Waddell’s story, is a tale of a farmyard mutiny by a put-upon duck leading a rebellion against his lazy, exploitative owner.

For Trish Cooke’s So Much, she sat in cafes in Brixton and remembered the people of colour that she saw. And when she illustrated Phyllis Root’s feminist take on the Creation, Big Mama Makes the World, she deliberately made the creator and her baby take on reflected light so that they might be people of any ethnicity.

For her bestselling picture book published in 1989, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, written by Michael Rosen, she decided to use a setting that was a memory of her childhood in Felixstowe. Much of the story is in the pictures and can be seen in the film of the book created by Lupus Films and the stage show. Since publication 30 years ago, the book has sold 15 million copies worldwide and been translated into 42 languages. It is one of the best-selling picture books of all time.

In 1999 Helen won the Kate Greenaway Award for a second time for her illustrated edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and for the 50th anniversary of the Medal in 2007, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was named by a panel as one of the top ten winning works of all time.

In 2018, Helen won the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award with her husband John Burningham. A follow up picture book with Michael Rosen, Oh Dear. Look What I Got! will be published in Autumn 2025 by Walker Books. 2025 will also be a year of exhibitions of Helen’s work including exhibitions at Burgh House in Hampstead and The Harley Gallery in Nothamptonshire.