It is a story she told - lightly fictionalised - in the children's classic When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Kerr was just nine when she fled Nazi Germany with her parents and her brother Michael, in 1933 - 24 hours before the Nazis came for their passports. Perhaps it is the way Kerr says "remember" and the piles of books about Nazi Germany on her coffee table that remind me of her background, and explain, possibly, how she is the children's author most likely to confront the death of her main character. "I'm coming up to 80," says Kerr, in her soft, hesitant voice, "and you begin to think about those who are going to be left - the children, the grandchildren. So why banish Mog? "I don't think it was so much about killing off Mog, as rather doing something about dying.
The author herself looks much younger than her age, and is impeccably dressed in short-sleeved wool jumper, tweed skirt, pearls and black patent shoes tipped with a bow. The sun shines in on welcoming fresh coffee and fine biscuits. Her living-room furniture is white and green 70s, as expected, though the television is widescreen and expensive. In Kerr's home in south London, there is light in all the stairwells. It would be an unusual thing to do to an adult - like allowing Jeeves to succumb to cancer - but it is remarkable for it to be done to the age group just beginning to read. Except that this time round, Mog goes to heaven. Nothing in this world has changed (Kerr says cats look the same when dying as they do all their adult lives). The 70s furniture is still in place, the Thomas family as fresh-minted as in the first Mog, which came out in 1970, two years after Kerr's other enduring classic, The Tiger Who Came to Tea. "Mog" is a short form of moggy, a word for a cat that is not a specific breed.Inside, the pictures - as always, drawn by the author, each stripe in Mog's fur a multitude of carefully inked horizontal lines - have not aged. In 2020, 50 years since the publication of the first book, a new book was released titled Mog's Birthday in which a birthday party is thrown for Mog, to the cat's annoyance, but she comes to enjoy the celebration. A special plush Mog and book version of the story were sold exclusively through Sainsbury's, with all profits being donated to Save the Children's child literacy work.
Kerr herself appears in this advert as a neighbour of the Thomas family. In Mog's Christmas Calamity Mog accidentally starts a fire in her home after having a bad dream, but is able to alert the fire brigade (as she had called 999 when scrabbling across a phone) she is hailed a hero for saving her owners, and (after her owners' neighbours pool their resources to undo the damage she had done, in reference to Sainsbury's "Christmas is for sharing" tagline) is later given an egg as a treat. In November 2015, the character was featured in the Christmas advert for supermarket Sainsbury's. The family name "Thomas" is from the first name of her husband, Nigel Kneale, upon whom the appearance of Mr Thomas was based. Kerr based her illustrations of the house in which the family live on her own family home in Barnes, London, and the two children were named after the middle names of her own son and daughter, Matthew and Tacy.
Mog judith kerr series#
Series of children's books Mog on the cover of the first book
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