Our Pass the Book Baton series took a break for the winter school holidays … and now it’s back! Every Friday we’ll feature a book creator who answers one question before throwing a new question to the next Friday visitor. (It’s kind of like a book relay in slow motion.) You can see earlier interviews in the series here.
You might remember that we left Katrina Germein with the book baton in June. Today she passes the baton to Peter Carnavas.
Peter Carnavas is an award-winning author-illustrator. His picture books have been translated into German, Portuguese, Dutch, Korean, Slovenian, Arabic, Italian and more!
His latest book is a novel called The Elephant. It’s about a girl called Olive, and an unwelcome elephant that nobody else can see …
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You might recognise some of these books:
Back in Term 2, Katrina Germein asked:
Sometimes you write, sometimes you illustrate and sometimes you write and illustrate. What’s the hardest thing about being so talented?
Peter replies:
Thanks for the (slightly embarrassing) question, Katrina.
It’s true that I write and illustrate, sometimes making books by myself, sometimes working with another author or illustrator. The hardest thing about this is I don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do! It takes a long time to make a book – months and months, sometimes over a year — and I have lots of little ideas that will never escape my head.
That’s not a very hard thing, though. There are lots of jobs that are much harder than making books. The most difficult thing, really, is trying to get my hand to draw the picture that I can see in my head. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s also hard trying to finish a book on time. It’s just like handing a school project into your teacher, except I hand mine into a publisher. I often reach my deadline and have to write an email to the publisher begging for a little bit more time to finish the pictures!
For more about Peter Carnavas and his books — check out his website.
And now Peter Carnavas passes the baton to the next visitor — Aleesah Darlison, author of picture books, novels and series.
Peter asks:
“You have written many different types of stories: picture books, funny stories, adventure stories, and books about the importance of looking after animals. Which stories do you enjoy writing the most, and is there a type of story you haven’t tried, but would love to?”
Check in every Friday for mini interviews with children’s authors and illustrators.
See you next week!
alphabetsoup.net.au 