Jenny Dalenoord visits bookshop KrisKras

One day Jenny visited Kriskras, the children-bookshop. She is one of the most famous post-war illustrators of children-books in the Netherlands. She illustrated more then 150 books. Who does not know the famous book of Wiplala from Annie M.G. Schmidt or the books about the Mouse, Mole and Rat.
''I love her pastels and aquarels'', says Maarten the bookshop keeper.

Jenny was born in 1918 on Java, Indonesia and came to Holland when she was eleven years old. After the secondary school she went to the academy of art in The Hague. She was influenced by Paul Citroen, Rein Draijer en Willem J. Roozendaal.
From 1970 till 1978 she herself was a teacher at the same art-school.
She believes in the fact that an illustration has its own value. A story can not be told by words only. Words are like a bunch of peddle-stones. The illustration has to conquer the space in between. It is the visual concept that tells the story.
Before drawing she deforms her own mental images of the scene. "Willem J. Roozendaal", she told Maarten, ''has influenced me the most. He said to me: look at Picasso, take a look at Braque, look how they change forms."
Jenny developed her own style and her own deformation and became one of the members of the "New Hague School".