Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne
Anthony Edward Tudor Browne is a British writer and illustrator of children's books, primarily picture books, with nearly forty titles to his name. For his lasting contribution as a children's illustrator he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2000, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. From 2009 to 2011 he was Children's Laureate...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth11 September 1946
age brother coming died front half heart home promoted rugby watch wonderful
I had just been promoted to the first rugby team. It was a perfect, wonderful coming of age. My brother was already in the team, and my father had come to watch us. We went home, and my father died in front of me. Horribly, in about half an hour. He had a heart attack.
book boys picture-books
As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.
book daddy design
Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.
drawing battle paper
The first things I remember drawing were battles - big sheets of paper covered in terrible scenes of carnage - though when you looked closely, there were little jokes and speech bubbles and odd things going on in the background.
men two people
You can never have 'equality' between two things that are not equal by definition. And so, for example, you can have equality among 'people', but not between 'men' and 'women'.
mother teacher brother
My dad never decided what he wanted to do; at times he fought in the army, was a teacher, a boxer, a light engineer, and a then a publican. My mum was a traditional housewife and mother. They showed my brother and I unconditional love.
lonely character childhood
A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.
children book mean
Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at proper books, which means books without pictures.
appreciation children book
I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books…. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.
book age left-behind
Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.
cowboys foreground funny gruesome indians layers liked stories
As a child, I'd always liked cowboys and Indians stories where there were two layers - gruesome in the foreground but funny in the background.
aware born capable children far pictures social worried
I never want to make a child worried or afraid, and I don't think I do. My pictures are born from the belief that children are far more capable and aware of social complexities than we give them credit for.
age aiming particular readers suppose
I don't like narrowing my readers down - there's not a particular age or gender or nationality. I suppose I'm aiming at the child I was.
The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director.