Chris Riddell
About Author
Chris and his family moved to Britain from Cape Town when he was a year old. Due to his father's peripatetic lifestyle as a liberal Anglican Vicar, Chris, his sister and two brothers grew up everywhere from Bristol to Brixton. Despite there being no strong artistic influences in the family, Chris displayed talent from an early age and was fed with art materials by his mother.
Chris did a year's foundation course at Epsom College of Art and then went to Brighton Polytechnic from 1981-1984, where he was fortunate enough to have Raymond Briggs as his tutor. When Briggs' publishers visited, Chris showed them his work and was asked on the spot to do The Book of Giants for Sainsbury's. Soon after that Chris began writing his own texts, enjoying the challenge of illustrating both his own and other people's work.
In testament to his success Chris joined The Economist as a political cartoonist and remained on the staff for eight years before moving to The Sunday Correspondent, The Independent and Independent on Sunday. In 1995 he moved to The Observer and he has been there ever since. He also works for The New Statesman and The Literary Review, where he took over from Willie Rushton as cover artist.
When illustrating, Chris reads the text several times to find the rhythm of the book then decides where he, as a reader, would want pictures to be.
Next he does thumbnail sketches creating the book in miniature, so he can see how it will feel to flip through it. Finally he draws on to a text layout before making the 'finished pencil' version. Ultimately he produces the ink and colour copy and makes any amendments.
He lives in Brighton with his wife, illustrator, painter and print-maker Joanne Burroughes whom he met at Brighton Poly. They have three children.
Chris has been highly commended for the Greenaway, with Castle Diary, and Commended for Something Else (author, Kathryn Cave) which also won the Unesco Prize at the Bologna Book Fair. He's been short-listed twice for the Kurt Maschler Award and Commended for the National Art Illustration Award. The Daily Mail hailed him as 'The new Maurice Sendak'.
Of his Greenaway win Chris says, "I am delighted, particularly because, aside from being one of the top awards, it is one where illustration is taken seriously by people who understand and pay attention to the craft. Being short-listed is like winning, but winning, well you know you've joined the pantheon so wow."
Interview
Chris Riddell is an established author and illustrator of children's books but he is equally at home creating political cartoons for The Observer.
Riddell's most recent work includes illustrations for Neil Gaiman's award-winning The Graveyard Book (Bloomsbury) for older readers and the final book in The Edge Chronicles series, The Immortals (Random House Children's Books), a series which he created in partnership with Paul Stewart.
This month, publisher Andersen Press is republishing Riddell's first ever children's book, Mr Underbed, a warm and reassuring picture book for young children that addresses a common childhood concern - what if there really is a monster under my bed....?
One night, when Jim is getting ready for bed, he meets Mr Underbed, a large and friendly creature who lives under the bed but who finds the floor rather hard. Jim's bed is much more inviting and before long, Jim is sharing his comfortable bed with an assortment of strange creatures that emerge from different parts of his bedroom furniture.
Riddell wrote the story at the start of his career. He was just out of college and 23 years old. When visiting Andersen Press to show examples of his illustration work, publisher, Klaus Flugge, asked, "Where are the stories?", Riddell said he had some at home but had to go home and write one. "I wrote Mr Underbed that night in sheer panic. I took the concept from the simple notion, is there something under the bed, and wanted to make whatever was under the bed reassuring.
"I also thought, if there is something under the bed, then there could also be something in the cupboard and behind the curtain." Riddell returned to Andersen Press the next day with the story, and Klaus agreed to publish it, he says.
Although the text in the reissued version is the same as the original book, Riddell has revisited the illustrations. The original illustrations are, he says, "much spikier" and in tone more akin to Maurice Sendak's classic, Where the Wild Things Are, than the comforting story he has now delivered. He says, "As artists we develop and change and if the book was going to be reissued, I would rather it reflected who I am now rather than who I was then."
Being a parent has also helped change and develop his approach to picture books, he says. "I always think of the parent reading the story over the shoulder of the child. Everyone who writes has to think about how the story is told and the connection with the story that the reader makes. You have the delight of reading it the first time and then the intense boredom of reading it for the 250th time. I always think there has to be a little twist at the end of the story for it to become a much loved shared reading experience."
Mr Underbed was Riddell's first experience of creating a character through a story. "A great tradition in picture books is to reflect on the instinctive love children have for something they like to cuddle, whether that's a toy or a blanket" he explains. "In picture books, we can create characters that capture that part of a child's interest, loveable characters that they can connect with in the same way as their nursery teddy bear."
Once an illustrator has designed a character, however, they have to be able to reproduce it through several illustrations and make it three dimensional and believable, says Riddell. This is what distinguishes traditional picture books from 'gift books', he adds.
Writing Mr Underbed was a catalyst for him to write more stories. "I thought I could either spend more time at home illustrating, or I could get out there and write stories myself, so that's what I did."
Although he continues to write many of the books he illustrates, Riddell says he still thinks of himself as an illustrator, rather than an author. "Many author / illustrators are the same, we are very visual but we write because we know what we want to illustrate," he explains. "If I wanted to illustrate dragons, I can go and write a story about dragons."
