Jill McDonald

Jill McDonald

Jill McDonald (1927-1982) began contributing work to the School Journal in the mid 1950s. Under her art editorship between 1959 and 1965, the Journal adopted a far more relaxed, playful and irreverent character.

McDonald’s work was much admired by her colleagues at the Journal. Peter Campbell described her work as "of a perfection beyond the ability of most of us", while Clare Vogel credited her with single-handedly changing the look of the publication in the mid 1960s.

"The only overall credo I’ve ever had for books for children," McDonald wrote in 1982, "is that if they look entertaining or exciting or amusing enough to be worth the effort of reading them, children will make that effort."

McDonald’s style was at once humorous and dreamlike. In the 1960s, she found an ideal creative partner in writer Margaret Mahy. In 1965 the Journal devoted two issues solely to Mahy’s work – A Lion in the Meadow and The Midnight People – followed in 1966 by The Wind between the Stars, which, like A Lion in the Meadow, was illustrated throughout by McDonald.

Current School Journal editor Tricia Glensor describes these collaborative works as revolutionary:

In the world of New Zealand in the early 1960s, what could be more liberating, even revolutionary, than to see the drab suburbs of post-war New Zealand populated by creatures of the imagination. The vibrancy of Jill McDonald's layout and illustrations and the zany imaginative creativity of Margaret Mahy’s prose seem to gust like a great, joyful, rumbustious Wellington wind through the Journals of the mid-60s, blowing away the stuffiness and drabness of post-war New Zealand life.

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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