EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 5 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

64 Peter Richardson tells the story of the twin sisters whose combined talents created some of the most captivating artwork to ever grace the pages of children’s literature. LEFT: The twins pictured in their London studio in 1953. Janet, whose speciality was wildlife, works on an illustration of ‘Princess Tai- Lu” for Robin comic while her sister Anne Grahame Johnstone looks on. BELOW: ‘Cinderella’ from ‘Dean’s Gift Book of FairyTales’ BOTTOM: Anne Grahame Johnstone’s frontispiece for ‘Peter Pan’ published in 1988. FACING PAGE: An illustration for ‘The Frog Prince’ reveals the influence of John Bauer and Kay Nielson on the work of the sisters. Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone In 1979, when the work of Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone presented a familiar and reassuringly ubiquitous face to the world of children’s book publishing, an event occurred which threatened to destroy the career that the twin sisters had built up over the preceding quarter of a century. While the exact circumstances of the disaster remain unclear, what is known is that, as a result of a kitchen fire in their Suffolk home, Janet Johnstone succumbed to smoke inhalation, leaving Anne alone to carry on the work that they had jointly created since they were children. Anne’s grief was compounded with the realisation that she would now have to master all the elements of the illustration that Janet had specialised in, and that she alone would have to be aide and confidante to their elderly mother Doris, who the twins shared their home with. The story of the Johnstone twins is fascinating, as it is not only singular in regard to the closeness of their creative collaboration, which involved each of the sisters applying