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Gavin Bishop

Gavin Bishop

Contributions

Sister Sock (Kids’ Night In)

Biography

Gavin Bishop is an author and illustrator, from Invercargill, New Zealand.

He is a children’s writer of international reputation, known for illustrating books from prominent New Zealand authors, including Joy Cowley and Margaret Mahy.

He worked as a high school art teacher for thirty years, before writing and illustrating children’s books full-time.. As a picture book author and artist he has published 70 books that have been translated into twelve languages and won numerous awards. He has also written the libretti for two children’s ballets for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

His distinctive ink and watercolour illustrations are a feature of stories that are sometimes traditional, sometimes original. Stories that have an obvious Canterbury setting include Mrs McGinty and the Bizzare Plant (Oxford University Press 1981), Bidibidi (OUP 1982) and The Horror of Hickory Bay (OUP 1984). Others such as Katarina (Random House 1990) and Hinepau (Scholastic 1994) relate to his bi-cultural heritage. The House that Jack Built (Scholastic 1999), which deftly combined traditional words with pictures illustrating the colonization of New Zealand, was Book of the Year in the 2000 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.

Gavin Bishop has been shortlisted for NZ book awards more times than any other author of any kind.

He is widely travelled and has been a guest author and speaker, through UNESCO, in Japan, China, Indonesia and the USA. He was a guest lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996. whose work ranges from original stories to retellings of Maori myths, European fairy stories and nursery rhymes.

Contributions

Sister Sock (Kids’ Night In)

Biography

Gavin Bishop is an author and illustrator, from Invercargill, New Zealand.

He is a children’s writer of international reputation, known for illustrating books from prominent New Zealand authors, including Joy Cowley and Margaret Mahy.

He worked as a high school art teacher for thirty years, before writing and illustrating children’s books full-time.. As a picture book author and artist he has published 70 books that have been translated into twelve languages and won numerous awards. He has also written the libretti for two children’s ballets for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

His distinctive ink and watercolour illustrations are a feature of stories that are sometimes traditional, sometimes original. Stories that have an obvious Canterbury setting include Mrs McGinty and the Bizzare Plant (Oxford University Press 1981), Bidibidi (OUP 1982) and The Horror of Hickory Bay (OUP 1984). Others such as Katarina (Random House 1990) and Hinepau (Scholastic 1994) relate to his bi-cultural heritage. The House that Jack Built (Scholastic 1999), which deftly combined traditional words with pictures illustrating the colonization of New Zealand, was Book of the Year in the 2000 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.

Gavin Bishop has been shortlisted for NZ book awards more times than any other author of any kind.

He is widely travelled and has been a guest author and speaker, through UNESCO, in Japan, China, Indonesia and the USA. He was a guest lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996. whose work ranges from original stories to retellings of Maori myths, European fairy stories and nursery rhymes.