An Email Interview with Gavin Bishop by Barbara Murison

Around The Bookshops,
August 2000, Vol 8 No 4. Marigold Enterprises, P O Box 22180, Khandallah, Wellington

On April 5 at the Award Ceremony at Government House we heard the exciting news that The House that Jack Built had been chosen by the New Zealand Post Children's Book Award Committee as the 2000 Children's Book of the Year and as the Winner of the Picture Book Section. Congratulations Gavin. It was a memorable moment for the audience and I guess it must have been even more so for you!

It was wonderful - overwhelming and difficult to absorb.

Would you like to tell a little about the creation of The House That Jack Built and some of the feedback you have received since it was published?

I had in mind to do a "colonial" version of The House That Jack Built for many years but I didn't get around to it. One of the reasons was because of the rash of "Houses That Jack Built"that were published about 10 years ago. However, when I did decide to put down some ideas as a storyboard, the whole book tumbled out in a more or less complete form. As I worked on the book later only very small changes were made. It must have been brewing in my head for years without my being conscious of it. The early work on the book was done in Boston in 1996 while I was working at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. I showed the idea for Jack to an editor at Houghton Mifflin hoping that they might want to publish it. She thought it was tremendous but didn't think that it suited the American market because of the strong New Zealand details and references. When I returned home I showed the idea to Scholastic. They took the book immediately. Since it's publication, and even before, the interest that people have shown in it has been staggering. People of all ages have told me how much they have enjoyed it. It has sold very well and has been on national bestseller lists for several weeks.

How did it all begin, Gavin? Was there an adult in your life who influenced you with reading and ideas when you were young? Do you remember the first picture book you saw as a child?

For as long as I can remember I've liked pictures and stories. I knew that I wanted to be an artist from a very early age and luckily I was encouraged by my parents and teachers to hold onto this idea. Books have always been a part of my life and I was read and sung to by my mother and grandmother when I was little. On occasions my father played a Jew's Harp. I don't remember why, but I relate this to some of the stories that I was told. I can remember a few of the books that I had as a child and in fact I still have some of them. Cole's Funny Picture Book was one of my favourites and so was The Hobbit. I used to go to the Juvenile Library in Invercargill every week to borrow books. I was very interested in books about people in other lands. Jungle themes were very high on my "desirable" list. And I've been a movie buff ever since I saw Pinocchio when I was 4 years old. Movies still have an enormous influence on my work. I have seen thousands of them since I was four and still watch at least 10 a week. Admittedly most of these are on television. Making picture books is probably the closest I'll ever get to making a movie of my own. The two art forms are very similar.

I find the picture book format fascinating and know that I will never exhaust all the ideas for books I would like to try. I'm very interested in seeing how far the traditional shape of a 32 page picture book can be pushed. I am also interested in using subject matter that is unexpected in this kind of book. Several recent Australian picture books are good examples of what I have in mind.

Graeme Base says that the long poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll had a tremendous influence on him and his work as an artist. Is there a book or poem that similarly influenced you?

Cole's Funny Picture Book published originally in the latter part of the 19th century by William Cole of Cole's Book Arcade in Melbourne has been a constant source of ideas and inspiration all my life. I was given a copy for my 4th birthday. I love the scrap book character of Cole's Picture Book and of course I love Cole's wacky and sometimes outrageous humour. I like it now even more after reading a biography of William Cole. He was a brilliantly creative and caring man with a huge social conscience. I would have loved to meet him.

I know you have written and designed children's ballets for The Royal New Zealand Ballet. Would you like to comment?

In the mid 80's I was approached by Harry Haythorne the artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet to see if I would be interested in writing and designing a ballet for children. I was delighted with the idea, especially when he suggested that I make the story and setting reflect New Zealand as much as possible.

So I set my story in Invercargill and loosely based the plot around the time I ran away from home when I was 2. There was a park a few blocks from my house that had a aviary. The birds there were a strange mixture of native and exotic ones and from my push chair I found them totally irresistible. So one day I slipped out the gate and made my way down the street in the direction of the park to see the birds. I didn't get far. My escape was soon discovered and I was returned home by a neighbour on the bar of his bike. The resulting ballet, Terrible Tom, was choreographed by Russell Kerr and the music was composed by Philip Norman. It ran for an hour. I wrote the story and designed the sets and costumes. It was performed throughout the country during 1985 and has been revived on a couple of occasions since. It was very exciting to see the dancers of the Royal Ballet dancing out a little bit of my life. I never told them that they were doing that of course.The following year, because of the success of Terrible Tom, I was commissioned to write another ballet, Te Maia and the Sea Devil. This story was set on the West Coast and told of a young Maori girl who rescued her parents from the terrible Taipo who lived under the sea near the beach where she lived. Again, as well as writing the story, I designed the sets and costumes. This ballet toured nationally throughout 1986.

You have recently spent some time in the USA and I understand a new book has come out of this visit.

Yes, I do have a new "American" book due to be published here soon. It is called Stay Awake, Bear! and has already been published earlier this year in the States by Orchard Books. It is representative of the sort of work that I do for the American market which is a much more conservative one than ours. It is a much simpler and less demanding book than The House That Jack Built but I am pleased with it just the same. The idea of a bear who decides not to hibernate one winter, but instead to stay awake and read books and watch videos, relates directly and deliberately to the North American psyche. The story itself though was originally written as a "reader" and submitted to Wendy Pye Ltd. When it was rejected I reworked it and showed it, through my agent in Washington, to Orchard books in New York. They took it immediately.

Is there anything in the area of publishing for children and teenagers in New Zealand you would like to change?

I would like to see dust jackets put back onto New Zealand hard back books now that greater care is being taken with production quality.

What about the future? Do you feel there will always be a place for the hand-held picture book? Can you see your work on the internet for instance?

I like to think that books are such an efficient and convenient unit that they will always be around. They are so simple and mobile. No doubt there are technological developments waiting to happen or already happening that will surprise me and perhaps supersede the book in the future. But the act of nursing a child and reading a much loved picture book seems to me to be such a natural human thing to do that something extraordinary will be needed to replace it. The smell and feel of a book is important too. I suppose a hand held, computerised tablet book-like devise could be given a nice smell. And it would have to be robust and cheap enough to be able to be carted around in the back of a trike or doll's pram. I already have stories on the internet but they were put there by my publisher. I am currently setting up a web site with the address of<www.gavinbishop.com> but I don't plan to start producing work to be accessed only on the computer. I don't find working on a computer to produce illustrations very interesting either. I still have this fascination with the "book" and enjoy all the business of working with handmade-paper and paint because I think through my hands. A computer mouse or a Wacom tablet just doesn't satisfy me.

Would you like to talk about yourself a little? What are some of the things that make you happy? Sad? Angry? Is there anything that worries you about the world in which young people are growing up?

My approach to life is an optimistic one. I'm not prone to depression and I get a lot of fulfilment and support from my immediate and extended family. I enjoy working at home and I listen to a lot of music ranging from opera to country and western. I like the irregular pattern that my life has at the moment. At times I work very intensely, 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. But at other times I do nothing much for weeks; travelling, visiting schools, doing some work around the house, thinking about new projects will fill my days. My way of dealing with problems is to give them a bit of space because things often sort themselves out with time. This is certainly the approach I take with my work. If I can't solve a problem that I'm having with a story or a drawing, I put it out of sight. A few days, or even a few weeks later, I sneak back and take a peek at it. Quite often I can see clearly what has to be done to sort it out.

Violence in New Zealand society worries me. The random violent outbursts against innocent people, often resulting in death, that seem to happen every few days makes me very afraid for my family and friends. There doesn't seem to be anything that you can do as an individual to protect others from it. It is the anger of predominantly young men that triggers this violence. A lack of respect for themselves and who they are leads to the abuse of the values, traditions and dignity of others. Racism is a huge problem here and we pretend that it's not.

Perhaps education is the answer?

Destruction of the past is something else that concerns me. In Christchurch for example, since the 1950s, we have lost a huge number of significant Victorian buildings which gave the city a distinctive and unique character and if preserved would have provided an architectural environment that would have attracted people here from all over the world. And what's more, we are in danger of loosing more of these old buildings quite soon. I am not against modern architecture and I'm not advocating holding on to old things just for the sake of it, but I think we could do more to build on the past to give New Zealand cities a greater sense of continuity and history. Most of our cities and towns look tacky and temporary.

The Maori respect for the past and its use as a reference and guide for the future is an approach that I'd like to see used more by city developers. We need to be reminded that we are only here because of those that went before us. Somehow I feel that this is related to the disconnection problems that some of our violent offenders have. The lack of structures and frameworks now absent in our society is reflected in our immediate environment.

What advice would you give to young people who are planning a career as an artist?

Don't be put off by what people might say about your wanting to be an artist. Hold onto your idea. There are a lot more ways today of making a living as an artist than there were when I was young. And in the publishing world it is a very exciting time. We are a small country but some great books are produced here - books that can stand up anywhere in the world.