Biog
About Kate:
Kate currently illustrates children’s books from her studio in Leeds where she lives with her partner and two house rabbits. She has a particular passion for finding peculiar looking people/animals to draw and is pleased that this has lead to a very exciting job as an illustrator.
Graduating from the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, in 2002, Kate was the highest placed undergraduate in the Macmillan Prize for Picture Book Illustration. She returned to Preston to study an MA in Children’s Book Illustration and has worked on a number of children’s books with lots of exciting authors.
An important part of Kate’s practice involves working with children and young people to help them develop their creative abilities, this gives her lots of inspiration for her own illustrations.
At the moment Kate is developing ideas for her own children’s book – she’s got a rough story worked out that involves birds and noodles (she will keep you posted on that one) …
Books and Projects:
There are quite a few exciting projects in the pipeline at the moment for Kate. Look out in January 2010 for the first books from the hilariously funny Danny Baker Record Breaker series by new author Steve Hartley. Kate loved illustrating Steve’s books as they describe many hilarious, disgusting and weird things including, bogeys, trumps and fake beards. Kate was amazingly excited to discover Danny Baker Record Breaker was long-listed for the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize 2010!
You can buy the full set of The Pain and the Great One books by Judy Blume right now. Kate is a huge Judy Blume fan and read all of her books as a teenager – she was delighted to illustrate the adventures and mishaps of brother and sister Jake (The Pain) and Abigail (The Great One) in this recent series of books.
Something Wild at the Walker Art Gallery was published in March 2009. Kate collaborated with the Walker Art Gallery and local school children to create a fun, interactive book to help children explore and experience the gallery. Kate spent lots of time at the Walker Art Gallery as a child, she felt very inspired exploring the space again as research for the book.
Other authors Kate has worked with include Marjorie Newman on Captain Pike Looks After the Baby and Ian Whybrow on Who’s a Cheeky Baby (both published by Macmillan Children’s Books).
To find out more about Kate’s work check out the portfolio section.
To contact Kate, you can find details in the contact section.
