Jeremy Sturdy, who has died aged 74 of bone most cancers, was the creator of a number of the funniest modern books for youngsters, together with two bestselling collection, The Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Canine and My Brother’s Well-known Backside. He was additionally the figurehead of the Booktrust’s Learn for My Faculty marketing campaign and a long-term champion of youngsters’s studying. He claimed the concepts for his tales got here from what made him snicker relatively than from attempting to guess what would amuse youngsters, and the books have been marketed with the invitation to “Snicker your Socks Off With Jeremy Sturdy”. They gave easy and boundless enjoyable to readers of all ranges.
His first success got here with There’s a Viking in My Mattress! (1990) which was tailored for tv by the BBC. Two extra Viking books and different tales adopted earlier than his profession actually took off with The-Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Canine (1995), illustrated by Nick Sharratt, a few boy known as Trevor who agrees to take care of Streaker the canine within the faculty holidays, and the more and more riotous and ludicrous conditions that he has to navigate. The Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Canine was the general winner of the Kids’s Guide award in 1997, and was adopted by a lot of sequels and by a second bestselling collection that started with My Brother’s Well-known Backside (2007).
A few of Jeremy’s tales had a historic twist, resembling There’s a Pharaoh in Our Bathtub! (2007) and Romans on the Rampage! (2015). He additionally wrote Nellie Choc-Ice, Penguin Explorer (2017) and sequels, a collection about local weather change particularly for youngsters with studying difficulties.
Nonetheless for a younger viewers however in a very totally different fashion, Jeremy wrote Armadillo & Hare (2020), a touching brief novel a few very particular friendship, and its two sequels, Armadillo & Hare and the Very Noisy Bear (2021) and Armadillo & Hare and the Flamingo Affair (2022). They confirmed that his reward for storytelling was simply as partaking with out humour as with it.
His most up-to-date guide, Fox Goes North, is because of be revealed in September. Realizing that it could be his final guide he described it as “not solely a summing-up of my perception within the significance of the humanities and retaining an open thoughts but in addition, within the writing, the story has accompanied me alone private journey by means of terminal most cancers”.
Born in New Eltham, south London, Jeremy was the second of the 4 youngsters of Charles Sturdy, a pharmacist who had wished to be an creator however wanted to assist his household, and Una (nee Shaw-Kyd), a major faculty instructor. Rising up in a home stuffed with books, Jeremy wrote his first tales whereas he was nonetheless at Wyborne major faculty, together with a retelling of the story of Jason and the Argonauts when he was six. A instructor who disliked him put him off studying briefly, however fortuitously, his curiosity in English revived whereas he was at Haberdashers’ Aske’s grammar faculty, New Cross, and flourished at York College, the place he switched programs from music to English.
After he graduated, his ambitions to be a author met with restricted success, so he turned a major faculty instructor as a substitute. His first job was in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1976 and he then had spells as a deputy head instructor at Birchwood major, Swanley and headteacher of Culverstone Inexperienced major. Steven Butler, the creator of humorous books together with The Flawed Pong and the Dennis the Menace Diaries, was a pupil at Culverstone Inexperienced, and described Jeremy as “an impish and terribly mischievous individual. I keep in mind him leaping into the college corridor with a guitar on his again and earlier than we knew it, we have been singing rock songs in meeting. It was like have Willy Wonka as our headteacher.”
Jeremy started his writing profession with an image guide, Smith’s Tail (1978). His first novel, The Karate Princess (1986), tapped into the then standard strand of feisty women in uncommon roles. After the success of There’s a Viking in My Mattress!, in 1991 he turned a full-time author, however he at all times acknowledged his years as a instructor as being a useful preparation and supply of inspiration for his tales.
Assured in his data of up to date youngsters and the main points of their lives, he incessantly grounded his tales in an on a regular basis scenario. From that acquainted start line he would then add a humorous twist to take the story in an sudden course. Telling tales that youngsters discover humorous and that make adults snicker, too, is notoriously tough, however Jeremy carried it off with fashion and attraction.
He made gentle of his imaginative course of, saying that concepts generally got here to him in a mashed-up kind within the night time. He would write them down on the time however usually discovered them to be ineffective when he checked out them within the morning. However he by no means diminished the problem of writing humour and he summed up how he saved unruly tales in examine, saying: “When you find yourself writing off-the-wall comedy you may be as loopy as you want, however it nonetheless has to make some form of interior sense.”
I first met Jeremy in 1997 when he so deservedly gained the Kids’s Guide award. His heat and generosity have been contagious and life-affirming.
Talking to very large audiences at festivals and in faculties, he projected a deep liking for and curiosity in youngsters.
He’s survived by his second spouse, Gillie (nee Pietsch), whom he married in 2008; by a son, Daniel, and daughter, Jessica, from his first marriage, to Susan Noot, which led to divorce; and by six grandchildren and two stepdaughters, Rosa and Isobel.
