posted on 05 Feb 2017

Tatterjack by Gregor Ian Smith

Sometimes when you stumble over an old and interesting book – this one dates from 1945 – you just have to accept that you really can’t find anything much about it just using the lazy person’s internet search option. Tatterjack  is one of those. Other than being a fantasy story for children about a scarecrow that comes to life when a rainbow has its beginnings in a briar bush and its ending in an swan’s nest, I really know very little about the background to this large colour, folio-sized board-book. Produced in a vibrant colour palate and with a text that almost looks like very neat handwriting, the book was published quite cheaply by Blackie, a firm specialising in this kind of children’s book. Frankly, I’d be surprised if very many survived in anything like a presentable condition.

Information about the artist, Gregor Ian Smith, is a little easier to find. He was a Scottish artist born in 1907 and trained at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1920s. He was never a well man and he was excused war duties because of this, becoming instead a teacher working for the Scottish Arts Council. The defining event in his career however was the chance to work for the BBC on the radio series, Children’s Hour where he was one of the writers.

This gave him the opportunity to get into writing and drawing his own children’s books and what we see with Tatterjack seems to be his signature style – and they were remarkably popular not just in the UK but across the world. However, he never stopped seeing himself as primarily an artist and painting was his first love and it was teaching art that was his priority. He lived all his life in Scotland and died in 1978.

There are no deep messages to be found in Tatterjack, it’s just a thoroughly good natured story of a Scarecrow with a great heart and a wellspring of emotional intelligence. As with most of these stories, it is the children and animals who instinctively understand Tatterjack and respond to him positively – and are the most distressed when he inevitably has to return to his inanimate state.

Ultimately this is just a story from a more innocent time and no bad thing for that – enjoy

Terry Potter

February 2017