Happy Birthday Judith Kerr, the woman whose stories captured a generation's imagination Happy 90th Birthday, Judith Kerr! I hope you get some wonderful gifts, safe in the knowledge your own gift to the world, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, is still being purchased, wrapped and presented to young children all over the world, including Germany where it is called Ein Tiger kommt zum Tee, which makes me happy for reasons I can't quite account for. Needless to say, it was one of my favourite books as a child, with its elegant illustrations (also by Kerr) and enigmatic details, the most famous of which was the description of the tiger drinking "all the water in the tap." It was a concept that kept me fascinated for days when I first read it over 25 years ago, and the phrase still pops into my head every now and again, especially when my own cats sit on the side of the sink, and turn their mouths up to the flow of the water escaping as I brush my teeth. The other thing that excited me most was the image of the little girl at the centre of the story, Sophie, going out for her evening meal to a café in her pyjamas. We all know by now that the tiger who came for tea ate everything in the house - this was heady enough - but it was the fact that Sophie wore her pyjamas to leave the house that seemed the most subversive when I was seven years-old, tigers coming to tea being quite commonplace in my neck of the woods. The strangely ambiguous ending also caught my imagination - Sophie and her mother go out the next day and buy a large tin of tiger food, but the feral feline never returns. It has a strange sense of menace and melancholy that remains long after the storybook has been put away. It's interesting that Kerr's own background as a child in Germany, fleeing the Nazis in 1933 in order to protect her intellectual father who had openly criticised them, certainly will have taught her about the nature of menace and melancholy, perhaps before she really understood what was happening. The Tiger Who Came to Tea is now in the hallowed group of children's stories that will never go out of date, along with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where the Wild Things Are. But Judith Kerr has written many other books, including the Mog the Forgetful Cat series and several works for older children, including the semi-autobiographical When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Collectively these works have sold almost 10 million copies, worldwide. Her most recent book, My Henry, published in 2011, was a take on widowhood that was not all about loss and loneliness - it presented, through verse, the fantasy life of a recently bereaved woman, following an adventurous path. Although Kerr has said that she found it hard to work following the death of her husband of 54 years, she also said in an interview that she found that writing helped her to grieve. I don't think I minded (not writing) when Tom was alive; it was nice not to be working for a little while, particularly if he wasn't - we'd go out and do things together. But now I'm on my own I hate not working. Judith Kerr's distinctive work has been an influence on millions of people for decades, and she is still going - she appeared at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival less than a month ago to talk about Judith Kerr's Creatures, an autobiography and love-song to her late husband. With such success behind her, there can only be one reason for her to continue: it gives her pleasure, and it shows.