Paul Howard
About Author
Paul Howard is a well-established illustrator with a history of successful picture books and has won numerous awards for his work. His picture books have included Jill Tomlinson's The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, and a series of illustrated fiction titles, Bugville.
Paul lives in Belfast with his wife and three children.
Interview
BUGVILLE
PUBLISHED BY EGMONT PRESS
April 2012
Paul Howard, the creator of Bugville, has traditionally worked as a picture book illustrator and some of his earlier work includes illustrations for Jill Tomlinson's The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, but he is also now working as an author. Bugville is his debut.
Bugville started life some years ago, says Howard, during an event in Ireland with a group of children. "The children took on the role of author and we worked out some characters and places." He suggested how the stories and characters they had created could be developed into distinct stories.
Two of the characters that the children had created stood out for him, he says; Superfly as a superhero house fly and Electro Slug, the baddy. "Over just three or four pictures we created this scenario where Superfly was being lowered into a crate of very hungry spiders by Electro Slug, and the image stayed with me."
Those images spawned a larger tale, Bugville, in which this exact scene is played out. Bugville, as its name suggests, is a city of bugs. There are lots of villains and also some heroes.
"It's fun playing around with bugs because once you start to look at real live bugs, you realise how much potential there is to create characters around them because of their natural defence mechanisms," Howard explains.
"Bugs letting off a bad smell to protect themselves from attack, or biting, is perfect fodder for eight or nine year old boys. There is also their camouflage to think about there are so many different things you can bring into play."
He adds, "I am not too literal in my presentation of the bugs but some of them have a natural leaning towards certain characteristics. For example, a wood louse likes dark and dank corners so I could envisage where those bugs would be and how they would live.
"I also have a wise old grasshopper who is hooked on Kung Fu films from the '70s." And there are the silly puns, such as lice cream instead of ice cream in the story.
Howard has developed a very graphic approach to the Bugville story, with a number of different styles including graphics, cartoon strips and short paragraphs, and he is currently writing subsequent books in the series.
He says, "During my events I always target the children that are disinterested and its been at the back of my mind to write fast-paced stories for this age group, where the language wouldn't be too difficult, every chapter ends with a cliff-hanger, and it has a cartoon-type approach to the illustrations.
"I hope that all children enjoy these stories Ive really enjoyed creating them."
