Roger Hargreaves
The web today is buzzing with chatter today with news celebrating Roger Hargreaves birthday.
The man who gave us so many memorable characters and stories in 48 books is undoubtably amongst the great British illustrators and children’s authors of all time and it’s not difficult to see why.
Inspired by his son who asked his father what a tickle looked like, Roger drew a round orange figure with long, bendy arms. Mr. Tickle was born! An easy to read story soon followed and in 1971 the book was published. The rest, as the worn out cliche goes and 100 millions sales later, is history.
Mr. Tickle was followed by Mr. Greedy, Mr. Happy, Mr. Nosey, Mr. Sneeze and Mr. Bump. Soon, 42 more characters were created, each following the successful formula of a dominant personality telling a simple moral lesson.
1975 saw the launch of 28 episode BBC tv series featuring many of the most popular characters including Mr. Happy, Mr. Silly and Mr. Messy, voiced by Arthur Lowe and in 1983 John Alderton and Pauline Collins voiced the 13 episodes of the Little Miss series.
‘‘It’s such a simple idea, it’s genius” says Russell Singler, Director at Art You Grew Up With. “Every child relates to one or more of the stories and reads them stories over and over again growing to love their favourites”.
“Mr. Men and Little Miss has cult status amongst adults too with clients buying art not only to suit their children’s personality, but their partner and friends too! We even have dinner hosts buying a piece of art to suit the personality of each of their guests....”
“We all have a Mr. Noisy, Mr. Chatterbox and Little Miss Naughty in our lives and we love the idea that we can produce collectable limited art that celebrates such an iconic force in British story telling”
Roger died in 1988 leaving an amazing legacy and we’re proud to be the Official Art Programme for Mr. Men and Little Miss. Check out our complete collection and discover which Mr. or Little Miss you are!
