Emily Gravett February 22, 2011

Emily Gravett’s animals – in pictures

The children's author-illustrator talks us through some of the challenges and rewards that go into her award-winning books

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Wolves: "This spread is from my first book. The whole book was based around the pencil drawing of the tree wolf, which I lifted from my sketchbook. I wrote Wolves while I was at university, and it feels strange looking at it now knowing that I wrote it without the faintest idea it would change my life." Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Wolf Won't Bite: "In my new book, I had great fun inverting the traditional power balance of the Three Little Pigs and the Wolf. I wanted to explore the relationships between the characters. The pigs are oblivious to the feelings of the wolf, but highly competitive amongst themselves." Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Wolf Won't Bite: "Here the pigs are getting seriously out of control. I really enjoyed drawing this page. There's something so satisfying about those lovely sharp knives!" Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Dogs: "Before I wrote this book I was really struggling to come up with an idea because I was distracted by my hunt for a new dog. I spent all my time drawing possible dogs instead of working. When I eventually found Otto (the Saluki leading the pack) I realised that the book had been slowly writing itself in my doodles." Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears: "This spread is from a book about a mouse who is scared of everything. I had great fun making this book, but found getting the book to look authentically moused; difficult until I came up with the idea of letting my daughters pet rats distress the paper before I used it. My studio didn't smell very nice for quite a long time!" Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Spells: "This book is the story of a frog who finds a book of magic. Being a bit stupid (he is a frog after all!) he rips it up before he realises he could use it to become a handsome prince.
"Frog's attempts to re-construct the torn book are shown in a series of split pages enabling the reader to make their own spells. I drew my prince naked, resplendent with a tattoo. It proved a bit much for the US market though, who asked me to lower the cloud to protect his modesty." Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Cave Baby: "This is the only picture book that I have illustrated for another author. In this case the wonderful Julia Donaldson. It was quite a different process for me as I would normally work on both text and image together and change things as I go along. It was very strange having to follow someone else's text, but I am very pleased with the results." Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — The Rabbit Problem: "The Rabbit Problem was a real brain-bender for me. It was inspired by a mathematical problem that I heard being discussed on the radio. I was struck that although the Fibonacci sequence was a maths problem it was about rabbits (otherwise I may well have changed radio stations). I wanted to show that behind the nice neat numbers lay a more humane (rabbitine) story." Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — The Rabbit Problem: November's page: By this point in the book the rabbits/numbers have multiplied to the extent that they can hardly fit onto the page (in fact they will soon escape from the page and the book in an explosive pop-up). Drawing this many rabbits was really confusing. I had to get the correct amount of adult/babies etc to stay true to the maths. The original artwork has a mess of tallies around the edge, but I still ended up putting too many rabbits in and had to erase a few!" Photograph: Macmillan

Emily Gravett: Emily Gravett — Blue Chameleon: "Each book has different challenges. Some, like The Rabbit Problem, are great fun, but are a bit like climbing a mountain. It feels good, but it's hard work. Blue Chameleon felt more like a fun day out. I enjoyed every single minute of making this book. I enjoyed it so much that I also made an alternative with an evil ending just for me!" Photograph: Macmillan

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