Christine Baker, who has died aged 71 of cancer, did much to give British children’s books a presence in France, making them readily available to families and schools looking for good material to read. For the French publisher Gallimard Jeunesse she learned to spot the best titles to acquire for the French market, promoted cross-Channel collaborations between authors and illustrators, and so became a central figure in children’s publishing in both countries.
On graduation in 1973, Christine worked as a bookseller at L’Artisan du Livre, Paris, before moving to London for a short spell of work experience at the Children’s Book Centre in Kensington. Owned and run by Robin Baker, it was a centre of excellence in promoting children’s books as well as selling them, running interesting events that brought authors, illustrators, readers and the wider book community together.
Christine’s work experience soon turned into a full-time job, and her temporary visit became permanent when, in 1977, she married Robin. Through her work she met authors and illustrators, as well as publishers, booksellers, critics and book promoters.
She was thus well placed to set about acquiring British books for the French market for the venture that Pierre Marchand and Hedwige Pasquet, the publishers at Gallimard, had embarked on in 1972. Appointed as an editor in 1978, Christine went on to be editorial director of children’s books, with the unshakeable belief that if writing and illustration was good it would easily reach across cultural and linguistic boundaries.
An early example of her flair for what could succeed was Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse. Now successfully adapted for the stage and the screen, it was then relatively obscure. “When my novel War Horse was published in 1982, it was not much of a success,” said Morpurgo. “But Christine picked up on it, and after our first meeting she bought the French translation rights to it for Gallimard – my first foreign rights publication.”
The ensuing working relationship and friendship helped Morpurgo, like many other British writers, to become a mainstay of French children’s reading experience. Fiction, non-fiction and picture books were published to the highest possible standards of design and production, and went on to include authors from earlier generations such as JRR Tolkien and Beatrix Potter whose rights had become available. Morpurgo noted how “by cleverly minimising cultural and language barriers she took the extraordinary flowering in the children’s literature of the UK at the time to new audiences all over France”.
In 1997 JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone also got off to a slow start in Britain. Bloomsbury Publishing cautiously printed only 5,650 copies for its initial print run, with the result that several French publishers turned it down.
Again Christine bought the first foreign rights and appointed Jean-François Ménard the translator, following his success with The BFG by Roald Dahl. To ease the passage of Harry Potter into French, Christine proposed translating its celebrated proper names into French words that captured the feel of their English counterparts rather than keeping to the originals, as happened with translations into many other languages. So the school named Hogwarts became Poudlard (pou du lard is “louse of bacon”), while the house within it called Slytherine became Serpentard.
Christine was equally skilful at spotting promising British illustrators. In 1990 she commissioned Axel Scheffler to illustrate Mina, Mine de Rien by Marie Farré, and later published all the picture books he did with Julia Donaldson as well as Donaldson’s other picture books. “Christine really believed that the art mattered,” Scheffler said. “And, of course, she was a great believer in cultural exchange and a united Europe.’
The Gallimard Jeunesse list came to include other major children’s book creators of the past 40 years, with Philip Pullman, Eoin Colfer and Lian Hearn among the novelists and Quentin Blake, Michael Foreman, Tony Ross and Jan Pieńkowski among the picture book makers. Christine ensured that British children’s writers, often with editors from the publishers at their side, became frequent visitors to French schools and bookshops and at the huge and celebratory salons de livres de jeunesse for children.
“We did not know it at the time,” Morpurgo said, “But Christine created a quiet revolution, bringing people closer together through children’s literature, that great but much undervalued pathway of knowledge, understanding and empathy.”
One week a month Christine worked in Paris. In the other three weeks she was part of the British children’s book world. Always stylishly dressed, she was a delightful source of wise insights on new books and their creators. Among the Gallimard authors whose books she successfully brought to Britain were Timothée de Fombelle and Jean-Claude Mourlevat.
Born and brought up in Sens, Burgundy, south-east of Paris, Christine was the daughter of Jacqueline Guillotin and Gérard Model, a tannery owner providing fine leathers for fashion and furniture.
Educated at the local Catholic school, Christine spent much of her school holidays in Deauville, Normandy, where she developed a passion for the 19th-century painters Corot, Boudin and Monet, who painted the region’s seascapes and locations. She studied French literature at the University of Caen, in northern Normandy.
In 2005 she was appointed to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and she maintained her connection with Gallimard after retiring in 2020, keeping the younger editorial team informed about literary and cultural developments in Britain and the US.
She is survived by Robin, their daughters Henriette and Mathilde, five grandchildren and her brother Philippe.
• Christine Marie Henriette Baker, book editor and publisher, born 5 February 1952; died 20 April 2023
