Kia ora e hoa!
Come and I’ll tell you a bit more about me and my books.
When I was a baby my family lived in Dunedin on Baldwin Street — it’s the steepest residential street in the world! Then, when I was two, we moved to Taupō and our house backed onto a massive 50 metre cliff that dropped straight into the Waikato River. The place where I grew up is now the Taupō Bungee Jump! At school I was a top competitive sailor and windsurfer, but the thing I always loved most was drawing and doodling.
Today I still live in Taupō beside the great lake. Now I make books as my full-time job. I’ve made over 130 books, so there’s plenty of Donovan Bixley books for all ages and tastes – and of course all of my books are jam-packed with colourful fun illustrations. Check out my most popular titles on the BOOKS page. Or find out more about my most recent book below.
I’ve won lots of awards for my books, including twice winning the Russell Clark Award for Best Illustration at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults (NZCYA). It was a real honour to receive the Mallinson Rendel Illustrator’s Award in 2017, which is an award for my whole body of work over my career. I’m most proud that two of my books have been selected for the International Youth Library’s White Raven Award, which yearly lists the top 200 children’s books in the world — in 2015 my part comic-part novel Monkey Boy was selected, and in 2017 Fuzzy Doodle (illustrated by me and written by Melinda Szymanik) made the list.
The most famous award I have is signed by Queen Elizabeth II, naming me an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Children’s Literature… that means I get to stick ONZM after my name. Wow fancy all that from making picture books!
Growing up, my mum was a librarian, so we always had lots of books in our house. One of my favourite picture books was The Lorax by Dr Seuss. I could get lost for hours in the busy pictures of Richard Scarry. Later I got into comics like Asterix and Footrot Flats — funnily, I thought I wanted to be a farmer like the character Wal Footrot in Footrot Flats, but I discovered that I really wanted to make books like Murray Ball, the creator of Footrot Flats. When I got a bit older I loved Grahame Oakley’s Church Mice series, and I still count Roald Dahl’s Matilda as one of my favourite chapter books. All of these things helped inspire the type of books I make today.
There are so many artists that I love but some of my favourite illustrators are Norman Rockwell, John Howe, Gennardy Spirin, and Dave McKean. I’m a big fan of the famous portrait artist, John Singer Sergeant as well as the great storytelling painters like, Edgar Degas and Leonardo da Vinci – I even spent 20 years making an illustrated biography about Leonardo!
“I love doing lots of different types of books, from baby board books to illustrated chapter books.”
My first book to get published was an ambitious illustrated biography of the great composer Mozart.
Faithfully Mozart took me six years to make and was published around the world. I’m most well known for my bestselling preschool books The Wheels on the Bus, The Great Kiwi ABC Book and The Looky Book series. I think humour is really important in children’s books and it was a lot of fun to retell the legends of Māui for young readers in my Tales of Aotearoa series. I’ve always been fascinated with the lives of the great artists and I spent decades researching and illustrating my biographies of Mozart, Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci. If you like a bit of history mixed with fantasy check out my book Leonardo’s Dragon – it’s five far-flung dragon tales set around the true story of Leonardo da Vinci and his pet dragon! And if you like the idea of comics, history AND hair-raising adventures with pussycats in planes, then my Flying Furballs chapter book series could be the purrfect read for you.
When I’m not making books I love playing music. I play saxophone in the Taupō Concert Band and The Great Lake Big Band, but my favourite is playing and singing with my friends in our 13-piece funk band, Hot Tub.
