Working first with his wife Jane, and later with illustrators including Raymond Briggs and Bruce Ingman, he wrote more than 150 books
Author Allan Ahlberg, who delighted generations of children with colourful characters and nimble rhymes, has died aged 87.
Working with his wife Janet, an award-winning illustrator, Ahlberg produced a host of bestselling nursery classics including Burglar Bill, Peepo!, and Each Peach Pear Plum. After Janet’s death in 1994, he worked with illustrators such as 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.
“He was enormously playful in spirit and language and had the ability to make you smile in one sentence,” said Belinda Ioni Rasmussen, CEO of Walker Books Group, which published some of his books. “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.”
Born in 1938, Ahlberg was adopted into a working-class family living in the West Midlands town of Oldbury. “My parents loved me and they did me a huge service saving me from growing up in a children’s home,” he told the Guardian in 2006, “but there were a fair few clips round the ear, no books and not much conversation.”
