(Click on event name for more information)

Books Illustrated Exhibition: Animalia and other Animals – from Real to Fantastic~ ongoing until Jul 12, Middle Park, Australia

International Youth Library Exhibit: Darkness Had fallen, The Night-time World in International Children’s Literature~ ongoing until Jul 31, Munich, Germany

Hollins University: Children’s Literature Lectures~ ongoing until Jul 31, Roanoke, VA, USA

An Exquisite Vision: The Art of Lisbeth Zwerger~ongoing until Sep 26, Amherst, MA, USA

Dromkeen National Centre for Picture Book Art Exhibit: From the Collection~ ongoing until Oct 24, Riddells Creek, Australia

Expo 2010~ ongoing until  Oct 31, Shanghai, China

International Youth Library Exhibit: Shaun Tan, Pictures and Books~ ongoing until Oct 31, Munich, Germany

Everyday Adventures Growing Up: Art from Picture Books~ ongoing until Nov 28, Chicago, IL, USA

Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award 2011~ entries accepted until Dec 31, Singapore

Manchester Children’s Book Festival~ Jul 1 – 4, Manchester, United Kingdom

Beyond The Border International Storytelling Festival~ Jul 2 – 4, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales,United Kingdom

Children’s and Young Adult Literature Festival: Reaching the World ~ Jul 3, Rozelle, Australia

aWAy With Words: Exploring the Ambiguities in Literacy and English Education~ Jul 4 – 7, Perth, Australia

West Cork Literary Festival~ Jul 4 – 10, Bantry, Ireland

NAIDOC Week~ Jul 4 – 11, Australia

Voices on the Coast, A Youth Literature Festival~ Jul 7 – 12, Sunshine Coast, Australia

Tokyo International Book Fair~ Jul 8 – 11, Tokyo, Japan

4th Annual Book Passage Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference~ Jul 8 – 11, Corte Madera, CA, USA

The National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature Exhibit: Golden Kite, Golden Dreams: the SCBWI Awards~  Jul 8 – Oct 1, Abilene, TX, USA

Children’s Literatrure Conference: Changing A-genders in Children’s Literature~ Jul 9 – 10, Hatfield, United Kingdom

UKLA’s 46th Annual International Conference: The Changing Face of Literacy: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow~ Jul 9 – 11, Winchester, United Kingdom

Hey, Your Pixels are Showing! A Photoshop Workshop and Creative Exchange with Illustrator Jed Henry~ Jul 11, Tokyo, Japan

2010 Bologna Illustrators Exhibition of Children’s Books~ Jul 11 – Aug 16, Tokyo, Japan

World Congress on Reading~ Jul 12 – 15, Auckland, New Zealand

Mazza Museum: International Art from Picture Books Summer Conference~ Jul 12  – 16, Findlay, OH, USA

Children’s Book Fair~ Jul 12 – 31, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Whitsunday Voices Youth Literature Festival~ Jul 14 – 17, Mackay, Australia

Chapter & Verse, a Book Club for Adults Discussing Children’s Lit~ Jul 15, USA

19th Storytelling Festival at the Edge~ Jul 16 – 18, Stokes Barn, United Kingdom

Storytelling Saturday at Fully Booked~ Jul 17,  Quezon City, Philippines

11th Annual Pacific Northwest Children’s Book Conference~ Jul 19 – 23, Portland, OR, USA

National Children’s Book Day~ Jul 20, Philippines

White Ravens Festival For International Children’s and Youth Literature~ Jul 20 -  25, Munich, Germany

Racial Harmony Day~ Jul 21, Singapore

Book Launch and Art Exhbition of the Winning Book from the Romeo Forbes Children’s Story Writing Competition~ Jul 21, Philippines

Hong Kong Book Fair~ Jul 21 – 27, Hong Kong

Lima International Book Fair~ Jul 22 – Aug 4, Lima, Peru

Storytellers of Canada Annual Conference~ Jul 28 – Aug 1, St. John’s, NF,  Canada

Southampton Children’s Literature Conference~ Jul 28 – Aug 1, Southampton, NY, USA

Text+Image: Picture Books and Graphic Novels One Day Seminar~ Jul 30, Melbourne, Australia

Cape Town Book Fair~ Jul 30 – Aug 2, Cape Town, South Africa

The 39th Annual SCBWI International Summer Conference~ Jul 30 – Aug 2, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Magabala Books, based in Broome, Western Australia, is an Australian indigenous publishing house. They’re committed to using aboriginal illustrators for their growing list of children’s books, but aboriginal illustrators are as few and far between as towns in that part of the country. So manager Suzie Hazlehurst put together a proposal to train and mentor promising talent. With funding from Writing WA and artsource, Suzie invited artists and likely future artists recommended by the local art centers in the Kimberley region to participate. She brought illustrator Ann James from Melbourne’s Books Illustrated to teach two 4-day intensive courses, one in Broome and one in Perth, with about a dozen participants each.

“Ann did a great job teaching both established artists and people with no experience in art mediums,” Suzie says. “Illustration requires specific skills. Artists have to know how to work with publishers, writers, and designers. They need to understand layout and collaborate on deciding which parts of a story need more detail.” Three workshop participants submitted exciting sample illustrations, she reports, and are now being mentored for particular titles.

Furthermore, Magabala is mentoring a young Adelaide writer on his graphic novel, which will also be the first graphic novel Magabala has published. The publishing manager is overseeing editorial guidance and a Melbourne designer with much graphic novel experience is offering design input. The target publishing date is late 2008 for this 3-way collaboration.

Magabala’s star is rising. The company, started in 1984, became an Independent Aboriginal Corporation in 1990. A recent move into the old Visitors’ Center in Broome, across the street from the new Visitors’ Center, has increased visibility and growth. A bush garden is in the works, as are gift products to be developed from the “artistic collateral” of their books. “Broome gets 300,000 visitors a year,” Suzie muses, “and if only a tenth of them bought one of our books…”

Wondering what the word Magabala means? Check it out here. For more about Australian indigenous book publishing, visit PaperTigers here. And here’s a PaperTigers review of one of Magabala’s most endearing titles, My Home in Kakadu. Who knows how much this one book has done to increase respect for the indigenous cultures of Australia?

When I visited Ann James, illustrator of Ready Set Skip!, at Books Illustrated, she mentioned that there’s an Australia-wide shortage of book illustrators. To help address the problem, she’s recently taught two workshops on book illustration for aboriginal artists, sponsored by Magabala Books.

Becoming a children’s book illustrator isn’t always a direct path. Ann started out as an art teacher. Gaye Chapman, illustrator of Breakfast with Buddha, had been a graphic designer and professional painter for many years when her first children’s book, Heart of the Tiger, came out in 2004. Sally Rippin, illustrator of Becoming Buddha, started out writing and illustrating picture books, first published in 1996. Her novel, Chenxi and the Foreigner, begun while she was studying Chinese painting in China years earlier, was published in 2002, and an adult version is now in process. Sally teaches writing for children at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where Ann is now studying with an eye to writing children’s books in addition to illustrating them.

Ann James and her partner, Ann Haddon, long-time promotors of children’s book illustration as an art genre, also produced Making Pictures: Techniques for Illustrating Children’s Books. They have had an exhibition space for children’s book art at their studio/bookshop for years and have recently begun organizing traveling exhibitions of children’s book illustrations on multiple continents.

While these illustrious illustrators illustrate books, their stories illustrate the many paths that can lead to a career in children’s book illustration.

The Pacific Rim Down Under is home to a vibrant community of children’s book enthusiasts, authors and illustrators. Unpacking first at the PaperTigers website, here’s a list of reading lists, with links of course, on Oz. Then peruse this annotated list of non-fiction books and book series about Oz for children, with links to other lists of Australia-related picture books, animal books, and fantasy books. The Children’s Book Council of Australia has links to award-winning children’s books by and about Australians. The University of Canberra’s Lu Rees archives of children’s literature has great resources as well. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators of Australia links to members’ sites.

Now that we’ve done the flyover, we’ll be zooming in periodically for close-up snapshots of Oz for Kids; stay tuned.