Jackie Morris is a British writer and illustrator. She was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2016 and won it in 2019 for her illustration of The Lost Words, voted the most beautiful book of 2016 by UK booksellers. She is a recipient of the Tir na n-Og Award for children's book Seal Children.
Life
Morris was born in Birmingham in 1961. Her family moved to Evesham when she was four. As a child she was told that she couldn't be an artist, but despite this she learned to paint. Morris went to High school at Prince Henry's High School in Evesham and afterward the Bath Academy of Art. On leaving college she found work in editorial, illustrating magazines like Radio Times, New Statesman, New Society and Country Living. She worked for years illustrating books and in 2016, she was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal for Something About a Bear. The book includes her water colours of different types of bear. She lives in a small house by the sea in Wales, painting and writing. The Lost Words is a book of "spells" by Robert Macfarlane with illustrations by Morris. The book has clues to words like acorn, blackberry and conker. The book was said to be inspired by 21st-century editions of the Oxford Junior Dictionary in which some words like kingfisher associated with nature were omitted in order to include technical terms like attachment, broadband and chatroom. In 2017, Laurence Rose organised a protest letter to the dictionary and it was signed by Margaret Atwood, Sara Maitland, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Macfarlane, and Morris. Much debate ensued but the creative outcome was an idea for joint work by McFarlane and Morris. This book was voted the most beautiful book by UK booksellers in 2016. An exhibition of The Lost Words was held at Compton Verney in 2017, featuring immersive floor to ceiling graphics of the poems and illustrations in the book. The exhibition subsequently toured Britain, hosted by the Foundling Museum in London, Inverleith House in Edinburgh, Royal Albert Museum in Exeter, and the North York Moors National Park’s art gallery in Danby. A Welsh language version of The Lost Words 'Geiriau Diflanedig' was published by Graffeg in 2019 with author Mererid Hopwood adapting Macfarlane’s acrostic spell-poems within Morris' illustrations. An audiobook of The Lost Words has been narrated by Guy Garvey, Edith Bowman, Benjamin Zephaniah, and Cerys Matthews, with ambient sound recordings Chris Watson.
Awards
Tir na n-O Award for The Seal Children in 2005 and previously in 1997 for Cities in the Sea
Shortlisted for the 2016 Kate Greenaway Medal for Something About a Bear
Books Are My Bag Readers' Award for The Lost Words
Winner, 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal for The Lost Words
Works include
Books:
Cities in the Sea with Siân Lewis
Illustrations in The Snow Whale by Caroline Pitcher
Illustrations in Out of the Ark: Stories from the World's Religions by Anita Ganeri
Illustrations in The Time of the Lion by Caroline Pitcher
Illustrations in The Fourth Wise Man by Susan Summers
Illustrations in Stories from the Stars: Greek Myths of the Zodiac by Juliet Sharman-Burke
