Children’s Book Festival

Roland Harvey was born in Melbourne and has always loved drawing. He trained as an architect but is best-known for his distinctive books, calendars and greeting cards.

Roland enjoys watching people at work and at play, mentally sketching them while they go about their business. He has always loved the outdoors and some of the scenes from his publications At the Beach and In the Bush are from real life.

He hopes to assist kids gain a greater sense of self by encouraging them to read critically and analyse what they read.

Bob Graham has written and illustrated many children’s picture books.

He was born in Sydney, and studied at the Julian Ashton Art School. His books are well known for their simplicity and humour, told from children’s perspectives, including Oscar’s Half Birthday, Buffy, (Smarties Book prize silver award winner) and Let’s Get a Pup (shortlisted for the 2002 Kate Greenaway medal; winner Boston Globe-Horn book award). He won the 2000 Smarties Gold medal for Max, the 2003 Kate Greenaway medal for Jethro Byrde, and the Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award four times. Other titles include Queenie the Bantam, (highly commended for the Kate Greenaway medal), Dimity Dumpty and Brand New Baby.

His current book How to Heal a Broken Wing, has won the Charlotte Zolotow award, shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, and shortlisted for the 2009 Kate Greenaway medal.

Elizabeth Honey is an award-winning author whose playful humour, originality, and energy strike a chord with children everywhere.

Her books include novels 45 & 47 Stella Street, Don’t Pat the Wombat! and Remote Man, poetry Honey Sandwich, and Mongrel Doggerel and picture books Not a Nibble!, The Cherry Dress and That’s not a daffodil! soon to be a children’s show. Her books have has won literary awards and been published in many languages.

Boori Monty Pryor is an indigenous Australian born in Townsville, North Queensland in 1950.

His father is from the Birri-gubba Nation of the Bowen region and his mother’s tribal group from Yarrabah, near Cairns, is the Kunggandji. Boori travels extensively as a performer and public speaker for school students and adult groups throughout Australia and overseas.

Boori has worked in numerous industries including education, film, television, modelling, sport and music. He has played in two World Masters Games in Basketball competition, winning a Silver Medal for Australia in 1994. In 1990 he was awarded the National Aboriginal and Islander Observance Day Committee Award for “outstanding contribution to the promotion of indigenous culture”. He is one of the Victorian Premier’s Reading Ambassadors for 2005.

He has co-written many books with Meme McDonald. Boori and Meme met in Melbourne when they were working for the Wurundjeri people, the traditional custodians of that area. They started talking about writing books. Meme had already written two books and Boori had at least three going around in his head but was busy performing dances, playing didgeridoo and storytelling in schools. Meme and Boori began their writing partnership with Maybe Tomorrow in 1998 (Penguin).

When Meme and Boori speak about their experiences and their books they combine their skills as storytellers to touch on issues of significance for all ages. They talk about healing the past and creating positive visions for the future; issues of finding strength within to deal with the challenges from without; survival, optimism and finding a basis for mutual, and self, respect.

Anne Spudvilas is a multi award-winning illustrator of children’s books and an established portrait painter. Her work concentrates on portraying character and expression in people, both in commissioned portraits or children’s books with a strong character base. Anne works predominantly in oils with some work in colored inks and pastel.

Mem Fox has written over 38 books for adults and children including Possum Magic, which has sold over three million copies and is the bestselling picture book ever in Australia. Mem has been presented with many awards including an AM in the 1993 Australia Day Honours for services to the cultural life of Australia; an SA Great Award for Literature in 2001; the Prime Minister's Centenary Medal in 2003; and she was shortlisted for the Australian of the Year in 2004. She worked as an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies in the School of Education at Flinders University, South Australia for twenty-four years and is now an international literacy consultant.

Mem's books with Penguin include Where is the Green Sheep?, Hunwick's Egg, A Particular Cow, Where The Giant Sleeps, Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, Hello Baby!, The Goblin and the Empty Chair, A Giraffe in the Bath and most recently Baby Bedtime. She lives in Adelaide, Australia.

Leigh Hobbs is the Australian Children’s Laureate (2016–2017). He is best known for his children's books featuring his characters Old Tom, Horrible Harriet, Fiona the Pig and Mr Chicken, as well as the Freaks and their teachers in 4F for Freaks and Freaks Ahoy. Old Tom has been adapted into an extremely popular TV series. Leigh has been shortlisted for the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award three times (for Mr Chicken Goes to Paris, Horrible Harriet and Old Tom's Holiday) and his books have won every major children’s choice award in Australia. Leigh’s books are published by Allen & Unwin.

Leigh was born in Melbourne, grew up in Bairnsdale and has lived and worked in Sydney, Sale and London. He is an artist who works across a wide range of mediums, as well as writing and illustrating his children's books. Many of his cartoons have appeared in the Age.

Chris Morphew was born in Sydney in 1985. He spent his childhood drawing comic books and writing stories about dinosaurs and time machines.

During high school, Chris read a lot of YA science fiction, and his collection of all fifty-four Animorphs books still has pride of place on his bookshelf. After school, Chris did a short stint as a primary school teacher – definitely the second-best job in the world – and then started writing for kids and young adults. His experiences as a teacher, combined with those formative high school years, have resulted in unintentional invaluable research for his writing.

In 2008 under the Zac Power author pseudonym H.I.Larry, Chris wrote the first 4 titles in the smash-hit Zac Power Mega Missions series. He has since written a total of 12 Zac Power books. The successful ingredients of Zac Power – action, suspense and edge-of-your-seat excitement – combine with heart-stopping plot twists that you won’t see coming in his own 6 title series, The Phoenix Files.

This transfixing thriller series tells the gripping story of three teenagers who uncover a plot to wipe out the entire human race. The Phoenix Files: Arrival was released in June 2009 and each subsequent release has increased his readership. Many fans are anxiously awaiting the release of the fourth book in the series, The Phoenix Files: Underground, this coming May.

Chris still lives in Sydney and divides his time between writing and casual teaching. He remains a sci-fi junkie to this day, and believes there is no movie so great that it couldn’t be improved with the addition of a spaceship.

Judy Horacek is a freelance cartoonist, illustrator and writer. Her work has appeared in the Age, the Australian and the Canberra Times, and her pointy noised characters can be found on fridges and toilet doors all over the world.

Eight collections of her cartoons have been published. Random Life will be her ninth. Judy also creates children’s picture books – both on her own and in collaboration with Mem Fox. Together, Mem and Judy created the bestselling Where is the Green Sheep? an instant children’s classic. Last year, they released their fourth book together, Ducks Away.

Her cartoons often reflect her interests in feminism, the environment and social justice, and also quite often her interest in funny for funny’s sake. 

She is currently published twice weekly in the Age, and has various other gigs and commissions as well. Major retrospective exhibitions of her cartoons have been held at the National Museum of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. She has been twice nominated for Walkley Awards for Cartoonist of the Year.

She has a range of greeting cards featuring her cartoons and she also regularly exhibits her limited edition prints and watercolours.

Elise Hurst has written five children’s books and illustrated over fifty.

Some of her picture books (which she also wrote) are The Elephants' Big Day Out, A Dream of Bunyips Dancing and The Night Garden, which was shortlisted for the CBCA’s Book of the Year: Early Childhood award in 2008.

As well as being an illustrator, Elise has a career in fine art and is an occasional lecturer at RMIT. She and her husband live in Melbourne.

Andrew McLean is a painter and illustrator; Janet is a kindergarten teacher. The McLeans have won popularity and acclaim for their picture books.

His spirited illustrations and Janet’s friendly stories encourage young children to look and listen and think.

Andrew grew up in the Victorian country town of Bairnsdale, in a Cape Cod house that his father built. From the dormer windows in his bedroom he could see over the paddocks and lakes on one side and the town on the other. When Andrew was a child he liked drawing. Andrew trained as a painter and teacher and would not have started illustrating picture books if he hadn’t married a kindergarten teacher.

Janet is a kindergarten teacher. She and Andrew have won popularity and acclaim for their picture books.

Janet grew up in Essendon, an outer Melbourne suburb. As a child she loved reading and enjoyed browsing through the books in her father’s extensive library. She spent many hours with the neighbourhood children making up and acting out stories, and producing plays and circuses. Working with young children over the past thirty years has been an inspiration to Janet as a writer.

John Nicholson graduated in architecture from Melbourne University in 1973. He worked as an architect, graphic designer and illustrator before beginning to write and illustrate children’s books in 1990.

John lives in the Victorian bush with his partner Jenny and their daughter Freda in an idiosyncratic, solar-powered house they built themselves. He now writes and illustrates full-time and writes mostly non-fiction, believing that ‘information books’ can be as exciting and adventurous as fiction. Children turn to them for their intrinsic interest as well as for school assignments.

Sally Rippin is the Australian Children’s Laureate for 2024 – 2025 and has written over 100 books for children and young adults, many of them award-winning, including Come Over to My House, the Billie B Brown, and the ...