Books
The wisdom of Judith Kerr
As a new exhibition at the Jewish Museum opens on the work of one of our finest storytellers, we present some of her classic quotes
July 9, 2015 14:34
By, Anonymous
3 min read
As a new exhibition at the Jewish Museum opens on the work of one of our finest storytellers, we present some of her classic quotes
July 9, 2015 14:34ByJC Reporter, Anonymous
'We lived in a nice house with a garden in a Berlin suburb. We had friends and a dog (though I really wanted a cat) and seaside holidays and a very pleasant, normal life. My parents didn't read to me. We were a very literate household but I think the idea of bedtime stories was purely an English one in those days; this was the 1920s and 1930s! One snag about having a famous father is that you almost never become famous yourself… you hardly ever hear of two famous people in the same family. It makes me rather sad sometimes…
From 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit', 1971
Fascism
"It all began when I was nine years old. My parents were German and my brother and I went to ordinary German schools. We were also Jewish, but my parents were not at all religious, so my brother and I hardly ever thought about that.
"My mother was marvellous, I had no idea it was dangerous, she was so protective.
"We left Germany on the night before the elections when the Nazi party got voted in, on 5 March 1933. My mother told me later that at 8am on 6 March, Nazis came to our house for all our passports.
"If we'd tried to leave Germany a day later, if my mother hadn't shut me up at the frontier, if my father hadn't been so far-sighted, it would have been too late. I would have been one of the other million Jewish children who died in Nazi concentration camps. I can never forget how lucky I've been."
London and the War
"To be poor in London was much worse than being poor in Paris because in Paris food, wine and sunshine are cheap.
"But the English people - nobody said 'British' in those days - were absolutely marvellous.
"Nobody ever said anything nasty to my parents who were constantly wandering about in the Blitz with their strong German accents.
"Suddenly everything seemed to explode. The cellar shook around her and before she could collect herself in the darkness another bomb came screaming down, the loudest she had ever heard… it was what she had always dreaded."
'Bombs on Aunt Daisy', 1973
Creativity
"I loved drawings -Degas, Rembrandt, Goya. I like painting but with drawing you always feel closer to the person who did it. At art school, I had a book from the Italian Drawing exhibition at the Academy in the 1930s, including all the great artists. I used to lie in bed and look at it - a pair of hands by Leonardo, that sort of thing. I determined never, ever to put anything in the text that the child could already tell from the pictures. Why should they struggle to read something they already knew?
"German is easy because it's totally phonetic. English is so much harder so that children shouldn't have to read any unnecessary words. The worst thing you can do is draw a picture of a boy in blue shorts and say here's a boy in blue shorts.
"Tom looked at my pictures and often had good, funny ideas, which I always used. I was less help to him, but I loved listening to the stories of plays he was planning to write…"
Judith on husband Nigel (Tom) Kneale
Work
"When I had my own children, I realised by the time children were two they had love, affection, jealousy, worry, everything adults have - and they could understand a story. The first picture book was about a tiger and it was just a bedtime story made up for my daughter when she was quite small and which she'd like. I had to tell it to her lots of times so, much later, when I had time, I wrote it down exactly as I'd told it to her and painting pictures of all the things that happened to it, and a publisher decided to print it and make it into a proper book.
"Well, when The Tiger Who Came to Tea had been published, we were all very pleased, and my husband and I and the children all tried to think what the next book should be about, and of course we all thought about our cat Mog. When we decided I should make a book about Mog, we all started thinking of things to put in it - all the things she did. She had lots of adventures! "When we first had Mog, our son was only a baby and he didn't know the right way to pick up cats. Poor Mog would look absolutely miserable but she never scratched a bit. You could always tell what she was thinking because she made such terrible faces."
Death
"Mog was tired. She was dead tired. Her head was dead tired. Her paws were dead tired. Even her tail was dead tired. Mog thought, "I want to sleep forever." And so she did.
Goodbye Mog, 2001.
"Mog lived to be a very old lady. If you count seven cat years for one human year that would make her 126 years old! She had a very good life – she had three lots of kittens and the other cats to keep her company and lots of adventures.
"What everybody wants is to be able to say goodbye to their families, look out at some trees or something and say, goodbye, it's been beautiful, but that's it now. If it were possible to end one's life legally, I think all of us old ladies would enjoy what remains of our lives much more."
