6 illustrators who also write picture books

15 May

Written By Maria Athanasopoulou

Here are 6 professional illustrators who started their careers illustrating picturebooks but have finally made their writing debuts. In such cases, both the story and the images complement each other very beautifully. For spoiler alert issues, I try to disclose the least possible information about the story.

Axel Scheffler : You all know Axel Schefler from Gruffalo story, a best seller written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel. He he has written the very famous Pip and Posy series for toddlers. As he shares in his website, “the idea for these books came when my daughter was at a similar age as Pip and Posy. I wanted to show the emotional drama of the everyday life of toddlers – the ups and the downs, and an up (of course!) at the end.”
David Litchfield: David’s illustrations are magnificent. I have his picturebook Pip and Egg in my bookshelf which was written by Allex Latimer. The palette used is amazing and lively (pink, purples) and the bird is one of the most beautify I have seen in any other picturebook.
Nicola Kinnear: Nicola has written herself and illustrated several picturebooks like “A little bit Brave” (her debut author-illustrated book) which is about a sweet rabbit, Logan who is afraid to go out of his house as well as Shhh! Quiet! and Dragons Don’t Share. I have all three of them in my kid’s library. We read it several times in a row and he likes them a lot. They are adventurous and we spend a lot of time inspecting the images
Oliver Jeffers: Oliver is very prolific and he is multi award-winning, internationally best-selling picture book creator. You probably know his series about a boy and his penguin. In the first series, the gist of the story is more or less “boy meets penguin” and in the second series is “boy and penguin are best friends & penguin wants to learn to fly”. I am looking at the illustrations and can’t stop laughing. His style is simple, not very complicated and crowded which makes the images even funnier.
Benji Davies: Benji is very famous for his best seller picturebooks. He has written and illustrated the very famous “Storm Whale” about a young kid living with his father on a beach that finds a whale friend. I like this book a lot because it does not state the obvious like that the kid feels lonely or how he made his whale friend feel comfortable out of the water, rather it insinuates it with illustrations and sentimental text. He has a lot of other books too like the Storm Whale in Winter, Grandma Bird, Grandad’s Island etc.
Marc Martin: Marc is an illustrator, artist and book maker full of imagination. He has author-illustrated several books like the “A River” about an imaginary journey of a kid through the river, floating among cities, forests, farmlands, and mangroves until he reaches the ocean. I find his illustrations complex and tedious, showing for example many cars and highways, very busy ocean life but also balanced with some more tranquil images showing how small we are compared to nature. I believe that it his books are versatile because the reader will be able to explain different ideas to the kid depending on its age. Marc has also written a non-finction book, for older children (probably 5+) called Lots which is very engaging and suitable for the entire family to learn and get to know places and animals and cultures.