Mick Manning

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Mick Manning (born 1959) is an award-winning British children's author and illustrator, who has written and illustrated some 65 books.

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[edit] Biography

Born in 1959 and brought up in Haworth, near Bradford, Yorkshire, England, Manning studied illustration and animation at the Royal College of Art, London. He has an MA RCA Master's degree in illustration and a BA (hons) degree in graphics from Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University). He devised and ran the illustration course at the Glasgow School of Art for a time, where the British artist Xavier Pick was one of his students. Manning's first book A Ruined House was chosen by Quentin Blake as one of his top 50 children's books of all time in The Laureate's Party (Red Fox) but Manning most often collaborates with partner Brita Granström. Recently they were shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Prize 2007 with My Body Book (Watts). They won The English Association award in 2005 with Voices of the Rainforest (Watts) and were again shortlisted in 2007 with Viking Longship (Frances Lincoln). Other books include What's Under the Bed? (Watts) and Dino Dinners (with the Natural History Museum, London) Yuck! and Snap! (all published by Frances Lincoln)

''Stone Age, Bone Age!, Roman Fort and Pharaoh’s Egypt are full of pictures that pull us into the past. If I had to choose just one book which shows powerfully, and in a way young children can understand, what it was like to live in prehistoric times, it would be Stone Age, Bone Age! Look, for example, at the double spread showing cave people huddling round a fire in a wild, bleak landscape (pages 22 and 23). This, like the other pictures in the book, reminds us that people in these ancient times would have had moods, fears and feelings just like us. In Roman Fort a double spread shows soldiers marching through the rain. All the senses are called on: the feel of the wind and rain (familiar to anyone who has been to Hadrian’s Wall), the sound of the soldiers’ studded boots, the effort of the standard bearer holding his burden high while struggling to march in inclement weather, and the smell of Autumn suggested by the vignettes of fallen oak and lime leaves. The faces on Brita’s people are eloquent of their attitudes and feelings.

Mick is a direct descendant of Boniface Muss, the Italian painter and mentor of John Martin, the 19th century landscape and visionary artist. As a child, Mick found Rosemary Sutcliff’s books gave him a sense of what it was like to live in the past and this inspiration is evident in his history books for children. He also remarked on the black and white drawings of Alan Sorrel and Charles Keeping -‘their dark scribbly atmospheric images appeal to all the senses’ and these images sometimes communicate as much as whole chapters in other books. Sorrel’s pictures of history and prehistory have influenced Mick and Brita’s new ‘Fly on the Wall’ series for Frances Lincoln.

As Mick and Brita said to me “Subconsciously, we are sure we are talking to our audience as if they were our own children, and saying things like “Remember this” or “Think about that” – this can’t be a bad way to make children’s books, can it?'''

(Extracts taken with permission from an article published 2006 for The English Association by Margaret Mallett, Visiting Tutor in Primary English, University of London Goldsmiths College. 'Mick Manning and Brita Granström: creators of lyrical non-fiction for young readers'.)


When Charles Keeping and I collaborated on Beowulf, Anglo-Saxon and Viking picture books were rare birds. Now they’re plentiful, and this is one of the best. The text, revolving around a longship and men, women and children abroad, combines scene-setting labels, racy handwritten captions, and an informative sub-text about Viking life. The disarming illustrations are strong, witty and tender, energetic and cartoonish (a sort of cross between Ardizzone and Posy Simmonds!)''

From Viking Longship reviewed by Kevin Crossley Holland in Nov issue of Junior Education

[edit] Selected bibliography

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