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Gavin Bishop

picture book illustrator, profile published in The School Library Issue 1, March 2009

Everyone likes to do what he or she enjoys. I like drawing pictures and I like sharing stories. From a very early age I liked drawing and got a lot of praise at school for my pictures and stories. So I suppose by writing and illustrating children’s books as an adult, I am attempting to revisit that happy time of my life.

Visiting schools to share my stories is a further extension of this attempt to revisit my childhood. It is also very useful for me as a writer to listen to children's ideas and responses to my books. Sometimes there are wonderful surprises waiting for me. A few years ago I walked into a library at Rai Valley Area School to be confronted by an almost full-sized model of Jack's house from The House that Jack Built (Scholastic, 1999). A cardboard-box cow stood nearby and a cardboard cat sat on the roof.

I left that school with wings on my heels. I could not wait to get home again to write something else.