What's In Your Mind? The World of Children's Book Creators 
COLIN THOMPSON 
[Photo of Colin Thompson] I was born in Ealing, London in 1942. 

I went to boarding school in Yorkshire, grammar school in West London and spent two years at art school in Ealing and Hammersmith where, to my dismay, I met people who could draw much better than I could. I met my first wife at art school and not long after, met my first daughter. 

I have worked as a silk-screen printer, a graphic designer, a stage manager in the theatre but never as a lumberjack in Canada or a sailor on a tramp-steamer in the South Seas. I studied film making for a year, got married for the second time and worked for a while making documentaries at the BBC. 
 
In 1968 I went to live in Majorca but less than a year later moved with, my second wife, to a tiny island in the Outer Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland where we spent seven years trying to stand upright in the wind and began twenty years working in ceramics. I also tried living off the land but all I got was an acre of weeds, backache, a pet chicken and two more daughters, though not necessarily in that order. 

In 1975 I moved to Cumbria where I lived and worked in an old farmhouse on the edge of a forest for twenty years. During this time I planted hundreds of trees and made a lake that is now home to a family of mediaeval carp. At one time my house was home for five rescued dogs and three cats. 

In the summer of 1994 Anne Graham, a teacher librarian at a Sydney boy's high school, bought a copy of my book Looking for Atlantis. It touched her deeply and she passed that enthusiasm on to a class of 12 year old boys who raised the money to fly me out from England to visit their school for two weeks in March 1995. I fell in love with Australia and, more importantly, Anne, went back to England to collect my computer, art materials, clothes etc, left a very unhappy 28 year marriage (and a beautiful old sandstone farmhouse with seven acre garden and three dogs) and two weeks later came back to Australia. Anne & I have been together ever since (and now have two dogs). Now, isn't that romantic? We will be leaving Sydney and moving to the country within the next year and are planning to start a children's literature centre. 

 [Cover of Looking for Atlantis] 
[Cover of Paperbag Prince]
To my constant amazement, I now have three grandchildren, one of whom became a teenager recently. 

I have always believed in the magic of childhood and think that if you get your life right that magic should never end. I feel that if a children‘s book cannot be enjoyed properly by adults there is something wrong with either the book or the adult reading it. My favourite fruit is cherries and my favourite music is Rock & Roll and old Blues records. One day I am going to have another motorbike. 

 

 [Cover of How to Live Forever] 
Colin Thompson's Homepage 

 E-mail Colin Thompson  

Order books at Dymocks Booksellers 
 
 
 
 

A list of Colin Thompson's books:  

Picture Books 

    * The PaperBag Prince 
    * Pictures Of Home 
    * Looking For Atlantis 
    * Ruby  
    * How To Live Forever  
    * The Tower To The Sun 
Story Books 
    * Sid The Mosquito & Other Wild Stories 
    * Attila The Bluebottle & More Wild Stories  
    * Venus The Caterpillar & Further Wild Stories  
    * The Haunted Suitcase & Other Stories 
Future Projects 
What's In Your Mind? Interview 
(WIYM) Why do you draw so many houses and books? 

(CT) I like drawing houses, there are endless permutations and possibilities. Also they are like windows on the imagination, like stories within stories - meaning that you can imagine all sorts of things going on inside them. Books are the same only to a lesser extent. And they allow me to create all sorts of wonderful puns with the titles. 

(WIYM) Which artist(s) do you admire and that you think you are influenced by? 

(CT) The only artist I am consciously aware of being influenced by, died quite a few years ago and that is William Heath Robinson who, as well as creating a whole world of fantastic machines, was an illustrator of amazing genius (His best book was an edition of A Midsummers Night's Dream). 

(WIYM) How much time it usually takes you to finish a spread of illustration? 

(CT) The very detailed ones can take up to a month's work though they may not always been done in one go. If I get stuck I may work on another less complicated picture and then go back to the first one. Sometimes I am working on three or four at once. A whole picture book takes about nine months. (Now there's a symbolic time scale.) 

(WIYM) Do you have a favorite type of Fairy/Folktales? 

(CT) It depends how you define fairy stories. My favourite children's books is Wind in The Willows (especially read by Alan Bennett who also has a wonderful recording of the Winnie the Pooh books). I find ninety percent of children's book to be patronising rubbish. I like Roald Dahl who never patronised. I think The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy is a modern fairy story and I love that and often play the tapes when I'm illustrating. 
 
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Last Updated

April 12, 2003