Talk: How words and pictures come together

Catherine Emmett & David Tazzyman 

Author Catherine Emmett and illustrator David Tazzyman share the process of how a picture book goes from being a text document into being a fully illustrated book, using their picture book The Pet as an example.

Catherine Emmett grew up in Newcastle and spent all of her childhood reading books. Then she spent 14 years in London making spreadsheets and not reading any books at all. After advising a group of young girls to find a career that they loved, she decided to take her own advice. She packed up her husband and her three young boys, moved to rural Essex and started to write picture books. She now spends her days surrounded by words, animals and noisy boys.

David Tazzyman is an internationally acclaimed award-winning illustrator. Born & raised in Leicester, David wanted to be an artist since the age of 5. He graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University 1993 and then travelled around Asia with sketchbooks for 3 years before moving to London in 1997. He worked as a commercial illustrator (clients including Cream, Vodafone, Orange, Natwest, Fiat, Levi’s, Virgin Atlantic, We Love) before falling into children’s publishing in 2006, illustrating Andy Stanton’s Mr Gum series which went on to win numerous awards including the first Roald Dahl Funny Prize in 2008. Now David mainly illustrates children’s picture and fiction books and lives in Leicestershire with his partner and 3 children. David likes drawing a lot. He also likes football, cricket, golf and biscuits. He still does not like celery (although he does concede it helps the flavour of a bolognaise sauce).