Allan Ahlberg, "who delighted generations of children with colorful characters and nimble rhymes," died July 31, the Guardian reported. He was 87. He and his wife, illustrator Janet Ahlberg, produced numerous bestselling nursery classics. After her death in 1994, he worked with illustrators like Raymond Briggs and Bruce Ingman, "with his career coming full circle in a series of collaborations with his daughter Jessica including Half a Pig and a pop-up set of anarchic variations on the tale of Goldilocks."
Belinda Ioni Rasmussen, CEO of Walker Books Group, said, "He was enormously playful in spirit and language and had the ability to make you smile in one sentence. Allan inspired generations of children's writers, inspired all of us who worked with him, and inspired artists to make some of their very best work."
He met and fell in love with Janet Hall while they were both studying at a teacher training college in Sunderland. After they married in 1969, he began teaching in a primary school while she worked as an illustrator. "But when she despaired of the humdrum material she was drawing and asked Ahlberg to write her a story, he later recalled, 'It was as if she turned a key in my back and I was off,' " the Guardian noted.
Their careers blossomed in 1976 with The Old Joke Book, which was followed a year later with the publication of fiction books The Vanishment of Thomas Tull and Burglar Bill. They firmly established their place in publishing in 1978 with a book for younger readers, Each Peach Pear Plum, which earned Janet Ahlborg a Kate Greenaway medal for illustration.
Their other books include Peepo!, The Baby's Catalogue, Funnybones, and The Jolly Postman, an intricately constructed story of deliveries to fairytale characters complete with envelopes containing letters and cards. It took five years to complete and sold more than six million copies.
Janet Ahlberg was 50 when she died of breast cancer in 1994. Allan Ahlberg subsequently published Janet's Last Book in her memory, later recalling: "Writing about something is distancing it.... It distracted me for a whole year. And then I was on the road to recovery."
That road included meeting Walker Books editor Vanessa Clarke, whom he later married, and to collaborations with other illustrators, including Bruce Ingman for The Runaway Dinner and The Pencil; and Raymond Briggs for The Adventures of Bert. In 2004, is first joint project with his daughter, Jessica Ahlberg, was Half a Pig. They subsequently collaborated on more titles including a memoir of his childhood, The Bucket, and a reworking of Goldilocks.
"I'm like a dripping tap," he said in 2011. "As I get older I drip more slowly, but I still come down here. I'm less impatient to spend hour after hour writing, though I like it as much as ever."
Francesca Dow, managing director of PRH Children's, told the Bookseller: "Allan was one of the most extraordinary authors I have had the privilege and pleasure to work with. His brilliant books--so many of them created with his late wife, Janet, the highly talented illustrator--have been described as 'mini masterpieces.' And they are, wonderful satisfying stories, the perfect marriage of text and illustration, full of surprise and humor, with something new to spot with every reading, and always with the child reader at their heart.... We had many discussions over detail, always with Allan wanting to get the book just so. He knew that making it perfect for children matters, and above all that the very best stories for children last forever. Allan's are some of the very best--true classics, which will be loved by children and families for years to come."