Krystyna Turska Children’s Book Author / Illustrator
Krystyna Zofia Turska was born in 1933 and spent her childhood in Poland until World War II.
In 1940, Krystyna was arrested with her family and taken to a concentration camp in Russia. She escaped to Persia and finally reached England in 1948.
Krystyna studied at the Hammersmith School of Art and became an illustrator and author of children’s books.
Here are a few of her many titles.
She had a long and prolific career in illustration and worked as an author too.
Like many other illustrators working at this time, she has a variety of bold and ornate styles to suit each different publication.
Krystyna received a Kate Greenaway Medal for The Woodcutter’s Duck.
Some of Krystyna Turska’s books include:
Coppelia the Story of the Ballet (1985)
How the Camel Got His Hump: And How the Whale Got His Throat
The Elephant’s Child
The Woodcutter’s Duck (1972)
A Cavalcade of Sea Legends (1971)
A Cavalcade of Goblins (1969), A Cavalcade of Witches (1966)
A Cavalcade of Dragons (1970)
Marra’s World (1975)
The Mouse and the Egg (1980)
The King of the Golden River (1978)
Tales From Central Russia (1978)
The Trojan’s Horse (1968)
Here’s a few black and whites.
Some wonderful painterly textures here.
I couldn’t find anymore information online, so if anyone else knows more about Krystyna and her work, do get in touch. Thank you.
fishinkblog.com 
These are wonderful! Thank you for posting so many great images. Can you tell me which book the first one is from? (Girl in headscarf…). That’s my favourite and I’d love to look at the whole book.
Thanks Pamela. That image is from Tamara and the Sea Witch, here’s a link https://theartofchildrenspicturebooks.blogspot.com/2011/01/tamara-and-sea-witch-written-and.html Enjoy !!
Wow. This brings back a lot of memories – my parents were both journalists and used to get a lot of ARCs, so our house was never short of books. We had ‘Heroes’ and ‘Goblins’, but I particularly remember the book about the Trojan’s Horse, which was a big old hardback – for all I know, it may still be lying around in my parents’ house somewhere. Almost as interesting is who edited the anthologies – Alan Garner, William Mayne and Roger Lancelyn Greene amongst others.
Some of the black-and-whites look like they might be prints – ie, woodblock or lino, or maybe even monoprints (ie, a plate was inked up, then areas wiped away).
Great Memories Alonghus, thanks for sharing them with us. 🙂
We also had a book I thought was in the same sequence as ‘The Trojan Horse’, but apparently wasn’t – ‘Daedalus and Icarus’ by Penelope Farmer, also with very distinctive illustrations, also very much of its time – I think it came out only a year or two after ‘The Trojan Horse.’
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=6010262615&searchurl=isbn%3D000195153X%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title2