Saturday, October 15, 2022

My hero / Arnold Lobel by Julia Donaldson


Arnold Lobel

My hero: Arnold Lobel by Julia Donaldson

'The stories have a quality of joyful optimism celebrating things such as the spring and friendship in a fresh, unsentimental way'


Julia Donaldson
Friday 23 December 2011


I
still mourn the death in 1987 of the American writer and illustrator Arnold Lobel. His imagination seemed boundless, so I feel sure that had he lived he would have produced even more of the wonderful stories such as Grasshopper on the Road, and Owl at Home which I so admire. Each book contains five short stories that are intended for beginner readers but also are great for parents to read aloud. They are fables really, about endearing human weaknesses such as greed, self-consciousness, laziness and addiction to routine.

Ilustration by Arnold Lobel



Perhaps best of all are his four books about Frog and Toad. Frog and Toad are friends, Frog being the straight guy and Toad the one who embodies most of the failings. Lobel said once that "Frog and Toad are really two aspects of myself". I think we can all recognise ourselves in Toad's stubbornness and Frog's common sense. In one of my favourite stories, "The List", Toad makes a list of things to do: get up, go for walk with Frog, and so on. He enjoys ticking the items off his list, but when it blows away he refuses to do anything. (He can't run after the list because that wasn't one of the things to do.)Lobel is hugely appealing to children. Toad (like Kenneth Grahame's Toad, though they are different in other respects) is essentially a child. In "A Lost Button" he throws a tantrum when he keeps finding the wrong buttons: he jumps up and down and screams, "The whole world is covered with buttons, and not one of them is mine!", and then feels contrite when he finds his own button on the floor of his house. I'm sure that most terrible twos (and upwards to terrible eighty-twos) can identify with both the tantrum and the sheepishness.

Perhaps best of all, the stories also have a quality of joyful optimism, celebrating things such as the spring and friendship in a fresh and unsentimental way. I bow before Lobel's generous inventiveness; he is my utter hero.






2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 My hero / Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill
111 My hero / Arnold Lobell by Julia Donaldson (23 December)

2012 (PAGE 9)
115 My hero / Nadime Gordimer by Tessa Hadley (27 January)

(PAGE 8)

2013

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194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman (13 September)
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer (1 November)

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2015
250 My hero John Bayley by Richard Eyre (22 January)
2016

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