PJ Lynch  

PJ Lynch has worked as a children’s book illustrator since leaving Brighton College of Art in England in 1984. He has won many awards including the Mother Goose Award, the Christopher Medal three times, and the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal on two occasions—first for his work on The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski, and again for When Jessie Came Across the Sea by Amy Hest (both Candlewick). The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey has sold more than a million copies in the United States alone, and has recently been made into a motion picture starring Tom Berenger and Joely Richardson. In recent years PJ has been commissioned to design posters for Opera Ireland and the Abbey, Ireland’s National Theatre. He has also designed several sets of stamps for An Post (the Irish Postal service). In 2006 PJ completed work on two large-scale murals in oils on the theme of “Gulliver’s Travels” for the Johnston Central Library in Cavan, Ireland.

PJ Lynch comments: “As a non-American citizen I feel hugely privileged to have been invited to contribute to this very special book. It is also a particular pleasure for me to have illustrated a lovely story written by Patricia MacLachlan, one of my favorite authors. I confess I did not know a great deal about the story's subject, Eleanor Roosevelt. However, when I read more about her, I found that she was known for her great kindness and sensitivity to underprivileged people of all races and religions. And she went on to become one of the most-loved and revered women of her time. Patricia has captured her kind-heartedness beautifully in her story “Hands,” and I hope I have caught a little of that quality in my painting of Ellie, Eleanor, and Bitty.

“My next book project also happens to be about the White House. I am illustrating a wonderfully moving text by Rosemary Wells called Lincoln and his Boys (Candlewick). Abraham Lincoln is seen very much as the stern, resolute Father of the Nation thanks largely to the wonderful sculpted images of him at the Lincoln memorial and Mount Rushmore. But he was very much a flesh-and-blood man with the day-to-day joys and worries that any of us have. Rosemary's story focuses on Lincoln as a father and as a husband, and it is my challenge to portray in pictures the laughter and the sadness of that story.”

PJ Lynch lives in Dublin with his wife and their three young children.

Additional titles from PJ Lynch:

The Names Upon The Harp written by Marie Heaney (Faber and Faber)
Ignis written by Gina Wilson (Candlewick Press)
The Bee-man of Orn written by Frank R Stockton (Candlewick Press)
A Christmas Carol written by Charles Dickens (Candlewick Press)
The Gift of the Magi written by O. Henry (Candlewick Press)

www.pjlynchgallery.com