Steve Augarde
I began writing children's books when I was at art college, which means that I’ve spent over thirty years as a children's author. Must be nearly time to grow up. About eighty titles published to date, I think. These include story books and pop-ups for younger readers, as well as my more recent novels for older children. I'm also an illustrator and paper-engineer, and you can see examples of this type of work around the site.
Sometimes I provide the paper engineering for pop-up books by other artists and children's authors - Jan Pienkowski, for example, Emma Chichester-Clark and Damien Hirst.
Finally I'm a semi-pro musician, playing mostly jazz. I provided the music and artwork for two BBC children's television series of Bump the elephant. Mind you, that was ages ago, and so it's high time somebody sampled it for a dance track and made me a fortune.
My first major work for older children was The Touchstone Trilogy, completed in January 2008, the three titles being The Various, Celandine and Winter Wood. The Various was an award winner in The Nestle Smarties Book Prize 2003. Both Celandine and Winter Wood have been nominated for the Carnegie Medal.
“And it is a fact an absolute fact that there are creatures on the surface of this earth that have never been studied by man . . . There are other worls - worlds within this world - that we can only begin to imagine. We may think we have seen all that there is to be seen on this tiny planet of ours. We most certainly have not - and perhaps never shall.”
“Many eyes are watching you, and many hearts are wary of your presence”
“I believe there is an explanation for everything - although we shall never know the explanation for everything. Not everything in this world can be understood by us, nor should it be. It is not necessary.”