Abcde BLOG

So who is Annie, no, she isnt my Grandama in fact she isn't any relation to me at all. But I do have a relationship with her books.
Annie MG Schmidt is the author of the lovely Jip and Janneke books. Sometimes hailed as the real Queen of the Netherlands, she was born in Kapelle in 1911. Today she would have been 100 years old.

She wrote many books but is best known for her lovely  books about 2 characters a little boy called Jip and a girl called Janneke. When I was pregnant with Funky Monkey, I asked Dutchie if, if we had twins could we call them Jip and Janneke, he wasn't best impressed! We didn't have twins as you can gather so it was alright!

She recieved the Hans Christian Andersen award for the series. Jip and Janneke are two little children who live next  door to each other, and get into lots of  adventures every week (it is said that, some story lines were based on real adventures involving Schmidt's son Flip and the girl next door). The stories were illustrated by Fiep Westendorp. The first story was published 13 September 1952, and the last one on 7 September 1957;

Jip and Janneke are among the best-known children's characters in the Netherlands. They were listed first on a list of "five typically Dutch characters and the HEMA uses them on a variety of products.

 Here in the Windmill Fields household, one of our favourite books is one in English all about the Netherlands. We bought it for Funky Monkey before we came here to teach her about The Netherlands and Dutch life.









You can see more about Annie on her special birthday website.

If you are in the Netherlands this week there are many Events happening around the Netherlands about Jip and Janneke.