A fabulous day for me today. It was a recipe for success: a day in the city (of Melbourne) including a visit to Metropolis (more on that later), a coffee at Degraves, a little bit of shopping and people-watching, a kids’ book illustration exhibition and a stop on the way home at a friend’s house, filled with talk of kids’ books… I. Heart. Melbourne.

It’s amazing how many ideas can be generated from one day on the town when you don’t get out as much as you used to. But I will stay focused, and the topic of this post is the aforementioned kids’ book illustration exhibition. It was called Hooked on Books, exhibited at Artplay, as posted here by Lou. The exhibition runs til 13 June, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in children’s book illustration.

The exhibition is of original illustrations from a range of Australian picture books, collected by Albert Ullin. Ullin is most famous for establishing the specialist children’s bookshop, The Little Bookroom, here in Melbourne. Ullin’s collection of original illustrations from Australian children’s books was initially driven by his desire to support young illustrators of picture books who were struggling to make a living. In 1973, he started by buying the works of Ron Brooks (illustrator of John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat – reviewed by Lou here – and of one of my favourites, Fox, by Margaret Wild). Later, he was approached by Peter Pavey, a friend of Brooks, who had not yet found a publisher for his illustrations. (Pavey later went on to publish One Dragon’s Dream which became a Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year.)

Part of the joy of the exhibition was seeing the original artworks for illustrations of books I know well - books by Graeme Base, Bob Graham, Alison Lester, Shaun Tan and Kerry Argent. Seeing the vibrancy of colour in the originals was amazing, as well as the three-dimensional aspect to works which included media such as fabric or paper sculpture. The other part of the joy for me was discovering many books I had not heard of. I took furious notes and have a new long list of books to search for in the library and in second-hand shops… Plenty of inspiration for future posts!