Terry was assigned to me as my illustrator when I wrote an educational book called Swinging on the Clothesline, back in 1991. The publisher said, \u201cWe know this guy\u2019s got a good sense of humour. We think you\u2019ll get along really well.\u201d They were absolutely right. Terry drew these kids swinging on the clothesline at a very high speed, flying off into the ether. I was like, that\u2019s what I\u2019m about. He created everyday portals into wild fantasy.<\/p>\n
The first time we met in-person was at a festival around 1995. I was quite awestruck \u2013 this was the great Terry Denton, winner of the CBCA Picture Book award! I watched him do a session with the kids where he was drawing cows in various emotional states: \u201cThis is a terrified cow. This is a peaceful cow. This is a cow in love \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
He was well-established; I was not. Publishers were still terrified of me then. \u201cWe find your stuff very entertaining,\u201d they\u2019d say, \u201cbut we can\u2019t see any point to it.\u201d But Terry did. He said, \u201cTell them I\u2019ll illustrate anything you do, because I love the freedom I get from your words.\u201d We both loved Monty Python; that was our shared reference point for everything. He was a true clown. He could make something funny out of nothing. I was very happy to work with him for so long, but also that I got to tap into his seemingly inexhaustible flow of nonsense.<\/p>\n
double quotation markWhen we did the \u201cBad\u201d books, we were public enemy number one. We were accused of encouraging kids to run across the road with their eyes shut<\/p>\n
Terry famously filled all the margins of the \u201cJust\u201d books with little doodles and flick pictures on the corners. This was my idea, because I\u2019d been a high school English teacher and I\u2019d watched how kids chose books in the library \u2013 they would flick through to see how big the print was. If it was really small or there weren\u2019t any illustrations, they\u2019d go, \u201cNup, not reading this.\u201d I didn\u2019t trust my audience to want to read a book. So I said to Terry, I don\u2019t want regular illustrations of the story \u2013 I want you to do little flick pictures so they start laughing and showing each other, and maybe I\u2019ve got a chance at getting them to read the first line. Terry took that ball and ran with it, to the point that he created an entire other book in the margins. Sometimes he\u2019d get bored and he\u2019d drop a piano on me. The kids would draw my attention to it \u2013 they\u2019d go, \u201cDo you know Terry dropped a piano on you?\u201d I\u2019d say, \u201cNo. Did he really?\u201d And they\u2019d go, \u201cYeah, look, it\u2019s on page 169.\u201d I would say, \u201cRight, when I get home, I\u2019m going to smash him with a piano.\u201d The kids thought we lived together, which we just loved.<\/p>\n
I loved it when he would turn up at my front door for what we would call \u201ca Terry Day\u201d. It happened every few months. He\u2019d turn up in his flannel shirt and no shoes. We spent a lot of time together in those early years, really getting to know each other so that we could write and draw without stepping on each other\u2019s toes. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of talking and, by noon, I\u2019d go, \u201cCome on, we\u2019ve got to get something done!\u201d And something would inevitably come out of all of that.<\/p>\n
I think what he liked about me was I gave him permission to go to crazy places. He had a whimsical, gentle side. He was very relaxed. He wasn\u2019t very fussed by a deadline or expectation. I was the opposite. I\u2019d say, \u201cCome on, Terry, we\u2019ve got a deadline. We\u2019ve got to get this thing done.\u201d And he\u2019d go, \u201cYeah, do you like this picture I\u2019ve done of my finger?\u201d It was fantastic that we were able to manage that so harmoniously over three decades.<\/p>\n
Terry Denton and Andy Griffiths on stage: \u2018I\u2019d say, \u201cDo you want to come on tour?\u201d and most of the time he\u2019d go, \u201cNope!\u201d\u2019 Photograph: Pan Macmillan<\/p>\n
When we did the \u201cBad\u201d books, we were public enemy number one. We were accused of encouraging kids to run across the road with their eyes shut. I was on A Current Affair! Some bookshops refused to stock it. The punk rock troublemaker in me was delighted. Meanwhile, Terry was nowhere to be seen. He was very smart in that way. He didn\u2019t waste energy arguing.<\/p>\n
In the \u201cTreehouse\u201d books, Terry and I became characters. They\u2019re neither child nor adult \u2013 they\u2019re somewhere in between. Occasionally I overhear a child complaining to their parents: \u201cAndy\u2019s not a child, mum. He\u2019s an old man! They lied to me!\u201d But I think it\u2019s a tribute to Terry that he could make it so convincing. Our characters fought horrendously. He hits me with a giant banana and knocks me out cold in that first book \u2013 there\u2019s six pages of darkness because I\u2019m unconscious. No matter what nonsense we dreamt up together, he could make it seem reasonable in his drawings. A never-ending staircase? Sure, no problem; Terry and Andy climb it for about 25 pages. When we got together, our inner child came out and started goading each other. And it was that playfulness that kids really picked up on.<\/p>\n
I think Terry was happy to be in the background. He was a private guy, probably a little more introverted than people might assume. He was very funny and gregarious. But he really loved, in his own words, slapping ink on paper. That was his happy space. The Treehouse books gave him enormous exposure and took up a lot of his time because there\u2019s probably a thousand drawings in every book. Sometimes he would draw something that wasn\u2019t what we wanted but sometimes it was better, and I would change the plot to match. Fifty per cent of the authorship was Terry. And 50% of the royalties too \u2013 I always bent over backwards to give him the credit. I\u2019d say, \u201cDo you want to come on tour?\u201d and most of the time he\u2019d go, \u201cNope!\u201d \u201cSo you\u2019re OK for me to go out and take all the love and the congratulations?\u201d \u201cYep!\u201d He did come on tour at the height of the Treehouse mania, but he just wanted to draw and paint.<\/p>\n
It was sad that his health declined so quickly after we finished the final Treehouse book. As it got worse he pulled down the shutters and concentrated on his health, with his family around him. We communicated by letter \u2013 and drawings.<\/p>\n
There has been an enormous outpouring of love for him since he died. My biggest regret is that I\u2019d love him to be around to experience all of this. He won the hearts of so many children. My favourite thing to do at a stage show was to say, \u201cRight, who\u2019s your favourite, me or Terry?\u201d then I\u2019d get mad at the audience for liking him better. But I always knew the answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Terry was assigned to me as my illustrator when I wrote an educational book called Swinging on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-625658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}