Remembering Sir Terry Pratchett

I've spent the last week in Tring granddaughter sitting so, with a bit of time to spare while she was at nursery, and with thanks to the generous retirement present of a National Art Pass, I visited the delightful Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury. The current exhibition features art and illustration by Paul Kidby, most notably the Art of Discworld, the fantasy series by Terry Pratchett who sadly died in 2015. Terry Pratchett was born in Beaconsfield and worked as a young reporter for the Bucks Free Press, interviewing the great Roald Dahl in 1969.

I wasn't really a fantasy reader but, back in 2002, I was fortunate to be invited, with my pupils, to the Carnegie Greenaway Award Ceremony at the British Library. To the uninitiated, these are the best children's book medals in the UK, the Carnegie being known as ' the Booker of the Playground'. The Carnegie Medal was won by Terry Pratchett for Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, a hilarious take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin and a great read for children aged 9 up. The Kate Greenaway Award for Illustration was awarded to Chris Riddell, one of our foremost illustrators and a former Children's Laureate. So there was I, with a group of children from a Reading comprehensive, talking to two of the most eminent people from the children's book world. They were both wonderful to me and the children and it is a day I will never forget.

From that day on, I started reading Terry Pratchett's children's books and can highly recommend them for all ages. The first Discworld novel The Colour of Magic is laugh out loud stuff. Terry Pratchett wrote 41 Discworld novels in all and they have been enjoyed by children and adults alike, selling millions of copies worldwide.

The exhibition of Paul Kidby's work reminded me that Terry Pratchett had an obsession with Death as a character and somehow managed to make him endearing! Not surprisingly, however, one of my favourite illustrations was of The Librarian of Unseen University. The Librarian first appeared in The Colour of Magic and was transformed into an orang-utan in The Light Fantastic.

Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular authors to have ever lived. If you can get to Salisbury, his right-hand man and collaborator Rob Wilkins is talking about Sir Terry's life and work at the Chalke Valley History Festival on Saturday 30th June.

I'll leave you with a quote from Sir Terry: "You describe a character by the shape they leave in the world" - perhaps we should all think about what shape we leave in the world ...