In 2014 Allan Ahlberg was lined up to receive the inaugural Booktrust lifetime achievement award. Allan, however, felt uneasy about Amazon sponsoring it and politely declined. Which might have been the end of the story, except that Philip Pullman remarked to me – or perhaps it was I who remarked to him – that Allan very much deserved a lifetime achievement award and it would be a good idea if it came, not from the world of publishing, but from his peers. An award to celebrate not just Ahlberg’s own books, but those he wrote with his late wife, Janet, among which are some of the most well-loved children’s books of the last 40 years: The Jolly Postman, Burglar Bill, Peepo!, Each Peach Pear Plum …
But what might the prize be? A cup? A certificate? A statuette? A medal? In the end we asked 150 children’s writers and illustrators to send us a letter, a poem or a drawing to show how much Allan and Janet’s work meant to them. We would then bind them into a single book.
When the replies started coming back, we were bowled over by the warmth, the enthusiasm, the deep and genuine admiration. Among a flood of contributions, we received letters from Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Morpurgo, from Roddy Doyle and Malorie Blackman. We had beautiful pictures from Shirley Hughes and Axel Scheffler, from Quentin Blake, Chris Riddell, Judith Kerr and Nick Sharratt. Brian Wildsmith, now 85 and living in France, sent us a sketch of a lion that brought a lump to my throat, and Raymond Briggs sent a glorious letter grumbling about the whole thing. They were all duly bound into a big red volume with The Shoestring Award stamped in gold across the cover.
It was handed over during a delightfully low-key ceremony this week at the Story Museum in Oxford. Tea was served. Sophie Grigson made delicious Ahlberg-themed cakes (peach, pear and plum). I gave a speech. Allan got a bit weepy. I got a bit weepy. Allan gave a speech, extemporising on the words flabbergasted and fizgig, and it was generally agreed that it was really one of the nicest prize-giving ceremonies any of us had ever attended.
