Earth mysteries, crafts, folklore, ghosts, puppets, eccentrics, landscape archaeology and rude rhymes; The Puffin annual series commenced in 1974 with distinctive cover art by Puffin's in house illustrator Jill McDonald and illustrious guest illustrators such as Raymond Briggs, Edward Ardizzone, Quentin Blake, Fritz Wegner and Tove Jansson. With fiction and articles by the likes of Michael Bond, Susan Cooper, Tove Jansson, Norman Hunter, Roald Dahl and Nicholas Fisk. Contributors to number one also incuded Joyce Grenfell and Prince Charles !
I post these excerpts not simply as an exercise in nostalgia - I never owned them as a kid and I can't imagine there would have been many children who were completely absorbed by them - it would have been a disappointing Christmas gift from a distant "auntie" perhaps, that would slowly grab your interest later in the year. But its instructive to remember how childrens' entertainment of this period, for some at least, lent a sense of enchantment to the world, maybe educated, but also mystified, terrified and occupied. You could say that these annuals are a kind of snapshot of British childrens' fiction and television of the period too. Its a glimpse of a world before CGI, licensing, Cowell and Cbeebies drained any real magic from our childrens' culture.
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funny you should post this, I've been thinking about these a lot recently. I'm after the one particular album I had as a kid (can't remember which year).. I remember being utterly absorbed in it, must have reread it everyday for months. There used to be a cartoon about a magician which I'm sure was drawn by one of the guys who contributed to Private Eye..
ReplyDeleteI remember those very well - I was a proud member of the Puffin Club, they used to have a magazine (Puffin Post) and events where you could meet other members (and, not entirely incidentally, browse the range of Puffin books and buy some). I think there may only ever have been a couple of Puffin annuals - I need to go up into my mother's attic and find them. Like Julian, I found them completely absorbing - there was so much packed into them, unlike the run-of-the-mill annuals where you could almost sense some bored employee thinking "this will fill another page if we make the type big enough, and we could also stick in a double-page 'poster' of Biffo the Bear".
ReplyDeletemagical!
ReplyDeleteGreat choice, Jim. I have both annuals and am slightly obsessed by Puffin house illustrator Jill MacDonald.
ReplyDeleteLots of her stuff here and elsewhere on t'web:
http://puffinclubarchive.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
My kids have no interest in them. Children today...
Ursula is fantastic!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Just fished out 'Puffins Pleasure' annual. They were so packed full of information. I too remember a magician (starry hat) love to see a picture of him!
ReplyDeleteYou dig up some wonderful stuff. I've been looking for these in PDF format but not found them yet - maybe it's time to buy a scanner and do it myself!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely wonderful!
ReplyDeleteI was a big fan of this kind of yearbook / activity books as a kid. They were Christmas gifts indeed, but I was looking forward to them (even though they were not as well illustrated as these Puffin Books).
So great, I am going to make some smilers!
ReplyDelete