{"id":6599,"date":"2019-05-23T18:29:35","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T18:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6599"},"modified":"2019-05-23T18:29:36","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T18:29:36","slug":"judith-kerr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6599","title":{"rendered":"Judith Kerr"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Judith Kerr\/Katy Stoddart\/flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Among reasons to be cheerful, the life and work of Judith\nKerr must rank very highly. Successive generations of small children have been\ndelighted by, among other things, her creation Mog: a cat whose very humanity\nis perfectly expressed by her feline behaviour. Mog is by turns affectionate,\nexasperating, cowardly, irrational, loyal and playful \u2013 and is adored by\neveryone in her family. As both author and illustrator, Judith Kerr brought to\nthe Mog picture books a lightness of touch and a wry sense of humour that\nappeal to adults as well as children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the security and stability of Mog\u2019s household are\ndeceptive. Judith Kerr\u2019s own childhood was disrupted by her family\u2019s flight\nfrom the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1933. They lived in Switzerland and in\nFrance before finally settling in Britain. Yet Judith seems to have thrived on\nthis, and has acknowledged that her parents were able to make her and her\nbrother feel that this was a big adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unselfconscious potential for anarchy that children\nbring to their surroundings characterises much of her writing for children, and\nnowhere more so than in The Tiger Who\nCame to Tea<\/em>. What is so satisfying about it is that it follows through to\nits logical conclusion the surreal disruption that entertaining tiger in the\naverage household would entail, but the humour is all the sharper for the\ndepredations of this ravening \u2014 yet charming \u2014 beast being received with\nimmaculate sangfroid by Sophie and her mother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Goodbye Mog<\/em>,\nshe tackles the ultimate taboo: the death of both a beloved character and \u2014 in\nthe context of the book itself, a family pet. While the book does not try to\nhide the grief that all the family members feel (yes, even Dad), it focuses on continuity,\nin the form of the new rescue kitten whom Mog, in spirit form, helps to adjust\nto loud children and rustly newspapers. Her work done, Mog withdraws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judith Kerr was been exactly the kind of immigrant the Government\nsays it wants. Having arrived here as refugee, she went on to work for the Red\nCross during the war, and subsequently for the BBC as a scriptwriter. She also\nbecame a naturalised citizen. She certainly enriched British life with her\nwriting and illustration, and received the OBE in 2012 \u2014 but why wasn\u2019t she\nmade a dame?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Goodbye, Judith Kerr, and thanks for all the stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6599"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6600,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6599\/revisions\/6600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}