Authorgraph No.8: David McKee

“Officially I was born in 1935 in Devon, but that’s really when I first came to England. I must have been about five or six at the time. It’s ridiculous, really – my parents were the only European couple in what was virtually a band of Afghan brigands. I don’t really remember all that much about Afghanistan, except the heat, but whatever my parents were doing there it was obviously on the wrong side of the law. Nobody in the family ever really talked about it. It was all kept very quiet.” In Devon he had a “straightforward, comfortable upbringing.” He went to the local primary and then on to the grammar school, where he began to develop the interest in art which he had always had. “I was the original three-stone weakling, and very isolated as a child. It was the usual thing when you’re not very well, you do something like draw all the time. In fact I wasn’t really ill. It was more a sort of general loitering. Everybody used to send me out on long walks with a pencil and a pad. They used to tell me to fill it. So I did.”

From school he went on to Plymouth art college, two years national service, and a year at Hornsey art college. “I had a pretty old-fashioned training at college – we were always out sketching and drawing. I thought I’d be a painter, but you have to earn money to live, so I started selling one-off cartoons to all the main daily papers while I was still at college. He continued to sell cartoons after he left college, but didn’t find the medium “satisfying”. “I’d always told stories, so going into picture books just seemed natural. I thought, `this looks interesting’, so off I went.”

He wrote and illustrated his first book – Bronto’s Wings – and sent it off on spec to several publishers. It was in full colour, and the resultant rejection letters all stressed the costs of full colour printing. So he compromised, re-did it in two colours and sent it off again. Back it came. This time he “went the whole hog” re-did it in black and white and sent it off to Dobson Books. While Bronto’s Wings had been flapping unsuccessfully round the London publishers, he had been writing and drawing his second book – Two Can Toucan – which he sent off to Klaus Flugge at Abelard. It was accepted and Bronto’s Wings came into land at Dobson at about the same time. That was in 1964.

Perversely just as things were happening with his picture books, he went with his wife to Devon and “virtually retired” for three or four years. But once back in London books came regularly: the Mr Benn series, for Dobson, and the Melric the Magician series for Abelard. “It’s nice doing a series because you can add bits and develop characters from book to book. In a way you can keep them alive, and you get curious yourself as to what’s going to happen when you’re working on a book.”

The McKee books have a very distinctive, quiet sort of humour, miles away from any form of obvious jokiness. “I like humour which is quieter, more surreal. It’s like with my family; there are lots of things I’d like to know about my parents being in Afghanistan, but at the same time I don’t want to know. I like the unknown, and in a way I like not probing into things. If everything is positive and scientific and known then there’s nothing left for your mind to play with. More and more in the books that I’m doing now I like to leave things unsaid, so that there’s more than one way of taking it. They’re becoming more psychological, working on many levels. It is like surrealism and that’s something that attracts me very much.”

Mixing the normal and the bizarre is a feature of some of his `problem’ books. Not everyone likes it. Tusk Tusk and Not Now, Bernard were both heavily criticised: the first because it tackles the problem of racial intolerance in a humorous way; the second because it was said it would frighten children – after all, Bernard does get eaten by the monster. “It’s interesting, because although Tusk Tusk was obviously about being black or white, it’s about all differences. It’s saying that unless you accept differences, then everybody’s going to end up being the same, and that will be boring. A lot of Americans said they didn’t want to touch it because they had enough of a colour problem without it. The Germans said I was talking about creating a master race!”

A lot of foreign publishers also expressed worry about Not Now, Bernard. “But in the main, kids tend to associate first with Bernard, then with the monster, which is the way I saw it. I’ve just seen an American review which is a real killer. It just ends up by saying `not funny, McKee.”‘ Again, that wry grin. “That’s quite nice really.”

He thinks that he tends to do “problem books” because he had a “very moral upbringing.” Apart from his parents’ obscure activities in Afghanistan, his grandfather had run an illicit still in Scotland and smuggled empty sherry barrels out of the dockyard where he worked to fill them with illegal hooch. “My upbringing was moral despite all that – perhaps even because of it, and the moral stuff all came through my mother. I was a great reader of Aesop’s Fables and the Bible as a child, and it’s all still in me. I can’t even cope with someone giving me too much change. I always give it back. And whether or not I’m aware of it at the time, all that just seems to come out in the books. I don’t mean to push a moral, but even in the King Rollo books, which appear to be quite empty, the relationships are very interesting – as I’ve discovered since I wrote them. The cook is a sort of mother figure, and the magician is a sort of father figure. He’s generally in the background, like most fathers. But when the king can’t do something, like tie his shoelaces, the magician does it by magic. When a child’s father does something like that for him it must appear to be like magic. I did it with a king because if you write about problems like learning to do up your shoelaces with a child as the main character, then immediately you’d be writing down. But if it’s the highest possible person in the land with those problems, then it must be all right for a child to have them as well.”

But, “I don’t really think about kids much when I’m doing a new book. I just do it the way it feels right. I suppose it’s because I’m basically stupid or un-grown up that it usually works out right.”

He’s never had a problem finding ideas, quite the reverse. “When you’re younger you think of all the places you’d like to go to, and you’re sure you’ll do it one day. Then you begin to realise that there are lots of places you’ll never visit, just as there are lots of ideas you’ll never actually do anything with. When you’re working on an idea the next idea’s always over your shoulder saying, `For Christ’s sake, hurry up and let’s get on with it’. I suppose in a way the idea and what I’m actually doing in a book is – unfortunately – more important than how well it’s written or drawn sometimes. I think a lot of the stuff I’ve done should have been better. But it’s always been a case of getting on and doing it.”

The present is “a very interesting period”. He’s taking stock. “I think I ought to be able to achieve more than I’m achieving. I suppose everybody thinks that, but I think you need to. I’ve somehow got to find out whether I’m right or wrong about it, and whether I can achieve extra.” His workload and work-rate are already phenomenal so it’s not quantity he’s talking about, more responding to a lot of challenges. There’s a new book which is going to be very surreal. It has a brief text illustrated in the normal way; but the illustrations include other silent stories which are open to different interpretations; some take place on only one page, others run over several pages or even the whole book. He’s sure some of these stories will draw the same sort of criticisms as Not Now, Bernard. He’s also made a commitment to film by setting up a production company with two friends – Leo Beltoft, an animator, and Clive Juster, a film editor. Their first series of King Rollo films has already been shown on BBC television and there are plans for working with other artists like Tony Ross. Several years ago when David McKee got involved in producing the Mr Benn films for the BBC, he had never done anything like that before – he thought he could learn it as he went along. It was an exhausting but rewarding lesson, “It’s a fantastically interesting medium to work in.”

Writing too is becoming more and more enjoyable. “It’s marvellous to work on six words and change the whole meaning just by changing one of them, or even the order.” He’s working on the script for a new film about Victor (a bear) and Maria, characters created by the Catalan illustrator Carme Sole Vendrell (published in book form by Blackie) and this involves translating from Catalan. His interest in this language and its culture has much to do with the impulse that led to Tusk Tusk – the fact that the Catalans have been oppressed for centuries by the central government of Spain and that their language and culture are threatened.

His feeling for Catalan is also related to his feelings about the current state of the world, a pride in your language and what you do being something which is not popular at the moment. “I suppose it’s the education system that’s tailing to teach the basics of living, which is really an inner contentment to support the individual. We’ve, got a life of so many years and we have to be free to do what we want. I don’t think we’re feeding that inner life, that inner contentment enough.”

Then he smiled that wry smile again. “I’m being a bit heavy, today, aren’t I?” So he put on a funny voice and talked about how he and his partners had put their houses “in hock” and borrowed money to set up King Rollo Films. “We’ve been cutting our throats every morning ever since.” He smiled. “But it’s all very exciting.”

David McKee – the books

From Andersen Press

Tusk Tusk, 0 905478 27 4, £3.00

Two Admirals, 0 905478 06 1, £2.95

Not Now, Bernard, 0 905478 71 1, £2.95 (Also in paperback from Sparrow, 0 09 924050 5 £1.25)

The King Rollo books, all Andersen Press, all 95p each

King Rollo and the Birthday 0 905478 57 6

King Rollo and the Bread 0 905478 56 8

King Rollo and the New Shoes 0905478 58 4

King Rollo and the Balloons 0 905478 69 X

King Rollo and the Dishes 0905478 68 1

King Rollo and the Tree 0905478 70 3

Coming autumn 1981:

King Rollo and the Bath 0905478 97 5

King Rollo and King Frank 0905478 96 7

King Rollo and the Search 0905478 98 3

Published by Abelard

The Day the Tide Went Out and Out and Out, 0 200 72400 2, £2.95

The Magician and the Dragon, 0 200 72545 9, £3.25

The Magician and the Sorcerer, 0 200 72094 5, £3.25

The Magician and the Petnapping, 0 200 72451 7, £3.25

And coming from Abelard in August:

The Magician and Double Trouble, 0 200 72747 8, £4.95

In paperback from Piccolo

The Magician Who Lost his Magic, 0 330 23279 7, 75p The following are published by Dobson Books

Big Game Benn 0 234 77660 9, £3.95

Big Top Benn 0 234 77607 2, £3.95

Mr Benn Red Knight 0 234 77033 3, £3.95

123456789 Benn 0 234 77361 8, £3.95

Bronto’s Wings 0 234 77770 2, £2.95

Available soon

Elmer – The Story of a Patchwork Elephant 0 234 77179 8

Elmer Again and Again 0 234 77085 6

Elmer and Wilbur 0 234 72256 8 (new)