My father, David Gadsby, saw the role of the educational publisher not as a mere purveyor of books, but as “changing what happens in schools”. He had noticed that school songbooks offered beautiful or stirring songs – but not much fun. In the 1970s, David, who has died aged 92, launched the A&C Black range of children’s songbooks, which opened a lighter, brighter possibility for songs in schools: real children’s songs, full of fun, nonsense, irreverence – and childhood.
David delighted in finding tongue-twisting titles like Appuskidu and Okki-Tokki-Unga, and decorating them with hilarious illustrations from the hands of the great David McKee, and the wonderful Bernard Cheese. He understood, helped by his many interactions with primary school teachers, that simple piano accompaniments and audio opened up the songs to many more teachers – and, through them, to many more children.
