Inga Moore

Inga Moore (born 1945) is an Anglo-Australian author and illustrator of books for children.

Inga Moore
Born1945[1]
Sussex, England
OccupationChildren's author and illustrator
NationalityAnglo-Australian
GenreChildren's literature
Notable worksIllustrations for The Wind in the Willows and The Secret Garden

Life

Born in Sussex, England, at the age of eight Moore emigrated with her family to Australia, where she went to school in Adelaide. She has said that at the age of fourteen her favourite book was James Boswell’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.[2]

After leaving school, Moore took a variety of jobs. Raymond Briggs’s book Father Christmas (1973) inspired her to want to illustrate books, and she began to look for work as an illustrator.[2] An early work, Aktil’s Big Swim (1980), tells the story of a Dover mouse who decides to swim the English Channel, not understanding how wide it is.[3] In the early 1980s, Moore returned to live in England, settling in Hampstead, while still working on picture books. Her Six Dinner Sid (1990), an illustrated book for children about a cat, took six months to complete[2] and won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in the under-five category,[4] but during the recession of the early 1990s her flat was repossessed. This had a happy outcome, as Moore then found an apartment in a large but decaying Palladian house in a Gloucestershire village, with good light in a room she planned to use as a studio. Not far from the River Windrush, the countryside around the house inspired the illustrations for Moore’s edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, which went on to sell more than a million copies.[2] Her editions of other children’s classics include Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost.[5]

As of 2010, Moore was still living and working in Gloucestershire. Following her version of The Wind in the Willows, she is reported to be working on a sequel.[2]

Books by Inga Moore
  • Aktil’s Big Swim (Oxford University Press, 1980)
  • Aktil’s Rescue (Oxford University Press, 1982)
  • The Vegetable Thieves (Andersen Press Ltd, 1983; Viking Press, 1984, ISBN 9780670743803)
  • A Big Day for Little Jack (1984)
  • The Truffle Hunter (Andersen Press Ltd, 1985)
  • Fifty Red Night-caps (Walker, 1988, ISBN 9780744517835)
  • Rose and the Nightingale (London: Andersen Press, 1988)
  • The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Prentice Hall, 1989)
  • Six Dinner Sid (Simon & Schuster, 1990, ISBN 9780750003049)
  • Oh, Little Jack (1992)
  • The Little Apple Tree (1994)
  • Six Dinner Sid: A Highland Adventure (2010)
  • A House in the Woods (Candlewick Press, 2011)
  • Captain Cat (Candlewick Press, 2013, ISBN 9780763661519)

Works by other authors illustrated

Notes
  1. Australian National Bibliography Annual 1990, p. 669
  2. Joanna Carey, “Inga Moore, illustrator of The Wind in the Willows”, in The Guardian dated 5 February 2010
  3. Inga Moore, Aktil’s Big Swim (1980), outline on cover of book
  4. Inga Moore at illustrationcupboard.com, accessed 19 August 2018
  5. Inga Moore profile at walker.co.uk, accessed 19 August 2018
  6. Carolyn Hares-Stryker, The Illustrators of The Wind in the Willows, 1908–2008 (McFarland & Company, 2009), p. 141
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