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Emily Gravett: Travelling far

21.11.07 Joel Rickett

Her hungry wolves, terrified mice and inquisitive meerkats have burned their way into the national consciousness. Her fiercely original picture books, which often end with a dark twist, have been recognised by the Nestlé Children's Book Prize, the Booktrust Early Years Awards and the Kate Greenaway Medal. And her wry style will be ubiquitous in the spring when she's the official illustrator for World Book Day 2008.

But Emily Gravett's path to this pre-eminence has not been smooth; in fact it makes J K Rowling's rags-to-riches tale seem cosy by comparison.

In the 1990s Gravett was living on the invisible margins of society, in travellers' camps. With no qualifications she fought her way onto the BA Illustration course at Brighton University. For her final project she turned out Wolves—a dark, stunningly original parable of the dangers of books. It won the 2004 Macmillan Prize for Illustration and earned her an instant three-book deal with the publisher. Since then she's mixed styles, from the thrilling, multi-layered Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears to the deceptively simple watercolours of Monkey & Me. As she speaks in her loft studio, surrounded by sketchbooks, her slightly nervous manner betrays the fact that her life once seemed set to take a very different route.

"I left home at 16 and was on the road for eight years living in a Bedford army bus," she says. "We kept dogs and did the travellers' circuit of fruit farms. I was a bit job-phobic, so the road seemed the perfect place to be at the height of festival era. But as time went on we couldn't get off. Even when you cut your hair and try and look straight you don't—everyone knows you're a traveller.

"When I had my daughter, space was confined; we had nowhere to pace around or get away from each other. There was no running water or loo, and the road attracts the dregs of society. I didn't want to bring her up around that.

"Luckily we found a nice old land lord who let us rent a dilapidated cottage in Pembrokeshire. I've always drawn, and used to doodle on paper I pulled out of skips. So I thought I'd start an art foundation course to stop myself going mad. By the end of the first week I decided I needed to go full-time. It was a revelation. A local family lent us £2,000 which lasted us a whole year.

"We wanted to move to the south coast, so I applied to Brighton University, which rejected me because I didn't have A levels. I was really angry so I kept ringing them up, and eventually they agreed to interview me. I showed them an illustrated diary from my pregnancy onwards. They let me into the illustration course and I hated it at first. It was conceptual, but I wanted to be equipped to work—I'd been skint all my life. Book-binding was the only bit I enjoyed.

"For my final project I did Wolves in six weeks, using watercolour, acrylic and wax crayon. I entered it along with Orange Pear Apple Bear for the Macmillan Prize. Winning was really exciting, the best moment of my life. I had been getting to panic point—my partner had given me three years before I had to become a plumber.

"I thought Macmillan would change the book completely, but Wolves is still my original, completely intact. Kids below a certain age go for the nice alternative ending, while older kids say 'Yeah, the rabbit's dead!'

"I'm a bit chaotic and I panic madly every time I start a new book. I sit and doodle, then hopefully have an idea and start thumbnail -sketches. A whole book may be kicked off by one striking double-page spread, but by the end it won't look like any of the early sketches.

"For The Odd Egg I knew that I wanted a story about a duck and a big, green-spotted egg, so I did loads of sketches of Duck, and little pieces of writing about eggs. I got obsessed with this duck—he's like a little human being walking around upright. The central sequence [where the eggs crack open as each flap folds over] was difficult—I had to get the sketches to line up, scan them in, overlay, then draw them. I wanted a muted 1950s colour scheme, all cream and green.

"The end of the story is a shock but nothing dies. Young kids will just enjoy the eggs opening, because you grow up with books and gradually see more in them. I'll have [surprise] endings as long as I can get away with them.

"Because I spent such a long time not really living in mainstream society I'm quite afraid of lots of situations. Until I got a publishing deal, I'd never eaten out in a restaurant or stayed in a hotel, it just wouldn't have occurred to me. From being the kind of person that people would go out of their way to avoid talking to, I have had to become a lot more confident.

"I'm still a wimp though—I worry even more now. Before I had nothing to lose: but my life is nice now with a book deal and a house. It could all go wrong so I'll just try to enjoy it for as long as it's fun."

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