Jan Pienkowski

Jan Pienkowski was born in Warsaw in 1936. His family were architects and artists. He went to The Cardinal Vaughan School in London and then to King’s College, Cambridge, where he read Classics and English – and managed to find time for a lot of posters and stage design. He co-founded the greetings card company, Gallery Five and worked in advertising, publishing, and doing graphics for the BBC children’s TV series Watch! In his spare time, he started to illustrate books for children but the books took over! He won the Library Association Kate Greenaway Medal in 1972 for his silhouette illustrations to Joan Aiken’s The Kingdom Under the Sea and again in 1980 for Haunted House. Jan pioneered the modern pop-up book with Haunted House Robot, Dinner Time, Good Night and Jan also illustrated the popular Meg and Mog series which later became a television show. Jan’s work continues to excite children, with the reissue of his classic pop-ups Dinnertime and Little Monsters.