John Burningham is married to Helen Oxenbury They have one son and two daughters.
John Burningham was born in 1936 in Farnham, Surrey, and attended the alternative school, Summerhill. In 1954 he spent two years traveling through Italy, Yugoslavia, and Israel, working at a variety of jobs.
From 1956-1959, he studied at the Central School of Art, after which he designed posters for London Transport and the British Transport Commission. He also spent a year on an animated puppet film in the Middle East. He then became a writer and illustrator of children’s books, his first book, Borka: The Adventures of a Goose With No Feathers (1963) winning the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1963, an achievement he repeated with Mr Gumpy’s Outing (1970).
Books in order of publication:
Borka: The Adventures of a Goose with No Feathers (Jonathan Cape, 1963)
ABC (Cape, 1964); also John Burningham’s ABC
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car by Ian Fleming (Cape, three vols. October 1964 to January 1965)
The Extraordinary Tug-of-war retold by Letta Schatz (Follett, 1968)
Seasons (Cape, 1969)
Mr Gumpy’s Outing (Cape, 1970)
Around the World in Eighty Days (Cape, 1972)
Mr Gumpy’s Motor Car (Cape, 1973)
Come away from the water, Shirley (Cape, 1977)
Time to get out of the bath, Shirley (Cape, 1978)
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Kestrel, 1983)—an edition of the 1908 classic
Granpa (Cape, 1984)
There’s going to be a new baby (Walker Books, 2011), illustrated by Helen Oxenbury—husband and wife, their first collaboration.
The Way to the Zoo – 2014
Air Miles – 2021
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