Gus Gordon is an author and illustrator. He grew up on a farm in northern NSW Australia and, after leaving school, worked on cattle stations all over Australia before deciding to pursue a drawing career. He moved to Sydney and studied at the Julian Ashton School of Art. He illustrated his first children’s book in 1996 and has now illustrated and written over 70 books for children.

 

Gus' illustrations are known for their loose, energetic line work, mixed media (most notably collage) and nonsensical humour. He enjoys the versatility collage offers and is particularly attracted to cardboard, old postcards and vintage engravings. His writing is always anthropomorphic --- where animals take the place of humans in the narrative. This most likely stems from an early and long love of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in The Willows. Gus takes great pleasure in the challenge of matching animals with appropriate, and believable, human character traits and quirks.

 

Picture books have always been a passion for Gus and he has a large collection of favourites that he refers to for inspiration on a daily basis. As can be seen with his writing, he is drawn to picture books that have an underlying soul and also to those books that are just plain funny --- the nonsensical the better. He believes humorous picture books can be deceptively clever and, most often, never get the credit they deserve. Gus’ stories are typically very character orientated, relying heavily on the character’s personality and their reaction to an environment or situation to direct the narrative of the story. He never deliberately sets out to write for a particular age group. Rather, he writes for anyone who likes books - not only children but also for adults and suspects we abandon picture books far too early in a hasty effort to move on to chapter books thereby missing valuable opportunities for children to study visual literacy, specifically the (often complex) relationship between the text and the illustrations.

 

Gus' influences are varied and diverse. They include the illustrators Jean-Jacques Sempe, William Steig, Serge Bloch, Sara Fanelli, Oliver Jeffers, Eric Carle, Neal Layton, Sara Ogilvie, Leigh Hobbs, Laura Carlin and Quentin Blake. Cartoonists George Booth and Charles Addams. Gus is published by Penguin Books in Australia and Neal Porter Books (Macmillan) in the US. He is represented by Charlie Olsen of Inkwell Management in New York. He is also proud to be an ambassador for the Room to Read foundation. Gus lives with his wife and three kids on the Northern beaches of Sydney.

Gus Gordon