Donovan Bixley visited us at Pinehurst in the last few weeks of November 2020, so I was greatly delighted when I came across his name while reading the Queen’s list of New Year’s Honours this year. Donovan received a ONZM honour for services to children’s literature as an illustrator. Our warmest congratulations go out to you, Donovan!
Donovan is a
very engaging and entertaining presenter. While he was speaking to our year
three and four students he elaborated on his creative process and his dream for
making a book series about adventurous pilots flying aircraft like the Spitfire.
As he spoke, he illustrated his thinking process on a drawing board and drew
illustrations to show how his creative thinking progressed. This process left
him wondering: what if those brave pilots where actually cats!
The series that
evolved is so very cute and clever – mixing a little touch of history with a
good dollop of fantasy. The ‘Flying Furballs’ books are very popular with our young
readers and since Donovan’s visit, we have purchased another full set to keep
up with the borrowing demand.
Take a look at this video to see where some of Donovan Bixley's cat-spiration comes from:
Donovan
Bixley is a talented artist who illustrates all his own stories and is in high
demand as an illustrator for other writers. You can see his work in books by
authors such as Kyle Mewburn and Barry Crump.
His work has
been published in many languages and we are very fortunate to have the Chinese
editions of the Dragon Knight (Kyle Mewburn, author) series in our World
Languages collections.
Just last week, Donovan was in contact again – offering us his latest translation in Chinese. We are very thankful to have such a range of quality children’s resources available to us in our collections, and it is especially wonderful to have books that support some of the home languages of our school community.
