My favorite illustrators # 6 Roger Hargreaves

Amongst my favorite illustrators, Roger Hargreaves merits a special place; it was impossible for me to not include him in this corner of my blog. Roger does not need any presentation: Mr. Men and Miss Little are maybe one of most popular characters of children books; since 1971, when these characters were created, dozens of millions of copies of Mr. Men booklets were sold. All kind of gadgets of these characters were also created: from t-shirts, to plasters, from mugs, to jewelries... Recently, even google dedicated its first page to this author with a special doodle inspired to his characters. And to tribute them and their creator, I took decision to carve some stamps inspired to Mr. Men and Miss Little, I hope you like them very much!!

What is less know, at least to me before taking decision to write this post, is how Roger started to create these funny creatures: according with wikipedia, one day in 1971 his young son asked to him "what does a tickle look like?" The answer to this question was an odd orange ball, with a hat upon its head, and long and trembling arms: Mr. Tickle was born. During following years, a little funny army of colorful characters was created from this first inspiration. What I like the most of Roger Hargreaves is, aside the cuteness of his creations and the hilarity that they excite in me, the fact that he was able to represent through his series of Mr. Men and Miss Little, the widespread features of human being. Likewise to a contemporary Balzac, Hargreaves was able to draw all characters of a modern "Comédie Humaine". So said, which character looks more like you? I'm sure that, if you check the image below, you will find the most similar to you!