British children's book illustrator and author Graham Oakley, who was "known almost entirely for one series of picture books: the Church Mice, published over a period of nearly 30 years from 1972," died December 19, the Guardian reported. He was 93. "Beautifully illustrated, written and designed, they are a series of warm-hearted and witty books which demonstrate perfectly that a successful picture book needs to be subtle and many layered, on the assumption that it may be read and re-read many times over and that its audience will be intergenerational."
Oakley's illustrations for The Church Mouse (1972) appealed immediately, with the stories about Arthur, the church mouse, and Sampson, a church cat, set "within the finely drawn setting of an English church, could be read on many levels and spoke to adults and children alike," the Guardian noted. Oakley viewed text as of equal importance to the illustrations and frequently wrote the books first.
Although he had initially planned to have each new title set in a different building in the fictional town of Wortlethorpe, the success of The Church Mouse prompted his publisher to persuade Oakley to keep the original location. Feeling that the church setting offered the most interesting architectural features, Oakley turned his attention to coming up with a stronger and more ambitious theme for each new story. The Church Cat Abroad (1973) revolved around making advertisements for cat food, while in The Church Mice and the Moon (1974), the cast took off on lunar adventures.
As the plots grew more complicated, Oakley's drawings "had an increasing number of asides and general busyness, the Guardian wrote. New titles, including The Church Mice Adrift (1976) and The Church Mice in Action (1982), both of which were highly commended for the Kate Greenaway medal, appeared annually at first and then with slightly more time between them until The Church Mice and the Ring (1992) and The Church Mice Take a Break (2000). By 1977, the books were doing well enough for Oakley to be able to focus on writing full-time.
Having tried fruitlessly to earn a living from doing book covers and book illustrations in the 1950s, Oakley turned instead to advertising as a layout artist, left in 1962 to become a scenery designer at the BBC. At the same time, he did freelance illustration commissions and also created his own work. His first book, Magical Changes, "allowed readers to create imaginative pictures of various combinations through split pages; it was published later, in 1979, following his success with the Church Mice," the Guardian wrote. He also wrote a brief series, the Foxbury Force, about a team of fox detectives, between 1995 and 1997.
Oakley continued to write and illustrate to the end of his life, creating a new version of Beauty and the Beast, "a long labor which he did for himself rather than for publication," the Guardian noted.