2023-05-15 16:48:35
To this very great lady of children’s publishing, French readers owe their discovery of the British novelist JK Rowling and her famous binocular hero, Harry Potter. But this is only the most media of his feats of glory. For forty-four years, Christine Baker, editorial director of Gallimard Jeunesse, has shaped and developed the prestigious catalog of the house, making it shine, in France and abroad, with tireless standards. She died in London, Thursday, April 20. She was 71 years old.
In his book The life of the page (Gallimard, 1995), the English illustrator Quentin Blake thanks her with particular warmth. And it is no coincidence that it was he again who designed the invitation to his funeral, which took place in London on Friday May 12. Longtime accomplices, the editor and designer shared the same form of subtlety, generosity, humor and communicative enthusiasm. In a word, brightness.
Born in Sens (Yonne) on February 5, 1952, Christine Baker, by her maiden name Christine Model, joined the Parisian bookstore L’Artisan du livre in 1972 after studying modern literature. and confirms that, from the age of twenty, she found her vocation: to instill the taste and joy of reading in the youngest. Three years later, she left for London to work at The Children’s Book Center bookshop, then the only specialized bookshop in the world. There, she fell in love with editorial production – the English were pioneers in illustrated books for young people – but also with the son of the founder, the bookseller Robin Baker, whom she married.
It was in this same mythical bookshop, on Kensington High Street, that another decisive meeting took place: that, in 1977, of the French publisher Pierre Marchand to whom Claude Gallimard, a few years earlier, had given carte blanche to found the Gallimard youth department. That year, after having created the beautiful “Mille soleils” collection, Pierre Marchand had just launched “Folio Junior”. As always, he teems with projects and offers Christine Baker to join his small team.
Thus begins an adventure steered by the famous “historical” trio of Gallimard Jeunesse: Pierre Marchand, Hedwige Pasquet, who is today the general manager, and Christine Baker, who will conveniently remain based in London. Combining their talents and their intuitions, all three will make Gallimard the number one French children’s book, with fiction authors such as Roald Dahl, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman, Lian Hearn, Timothée de Fombelle… , but also a prestigious catalog of albums (Sempé, Quentin Blake, Philippe Dumas, Jacqueline Duhême, Etienne Delessert, etc.), without forgetting, from the 1980s, very innovative documentary collections such as « The Eyes of Discovery”, in co-edition with the Englishman Dorling Kindersley, “My First Discoveries” or the “Discoveries Gallimard” collection.
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