It was high time for a new children’s book, thought Annie and Fiep. Or was it Hanny van 
der Horst, editor-in-chief of Margriet, who thought so? Anyway, Hanny wanted a story by Annie, but only if it was illustrated by Fiep.

From 28 September 1968 onwards, every fortnight a story by Annie appeared about a little 
boy called Pluk who had all sorts of adventures with his red breakdown lorry. The stories 
were illustrated in colour by Fiep. If colour illustrations were made for a magazine first, the 
litho costs entailed in publishing a book with colour illustrations would be considerably reduced, since the lithos would already be available. This was the way it was supposed to happen if De Arbeiderspers were to publish the book about Pluk. But in spite of the ready-made lithos, the publishers still thought the enterprise was too risky; a children’s book with so 
many colour illustrations would be much too expensive and would never sell enough copies. This was the reason why Fiep and Annie changed publishers and went to Querido, where their friend and former publisher Reinold Kuypers was the director. He thought the publication 
would be viable. In the mean-time, Pluk van de Petteflet has been reprinted 26 times!



For the book, Annie rewrote the instalments which had been published in Margriet. A few 
adventures were omitted. Recently most of the original illustrations for these instalments were rediscovered while an archive was being made of Fiep’s oeuvre. Some of these illustrations and the adventures of Pluk which they had illustrated and which had not previously been published in book form have now appeared in the book ‘Getekend: Fiep Westendorp’.