Narelle Oliver is the author-illustrator of a number of award-winning children’s picture books including:
Leaf Tail, High Above the Sea, The Best Beak in Boonaroo Bay, The Hunt, Sand Swimmers, Mermaids Most Amazing, Baby Bilby, Where Do You Sleep?, The Very Blue Thingamajig, Dancing the Boom-cha-cha Boogie, Twilight Hunt and Home.
Her picture book, Home, was commissioned by the Brisbane City Council Library Services Division and features the peregrine falcons which inhabit inner-city Brisbane. This book won a NSW Premier’s Literature Award (2007), was short-listed for multiple other Australian awards and forms the basis of the design of the new Brisbane City Council children’s library. Narelle's latest picture book, Fox and Fine Feathers, was release in 2009 and launched by Australia's Governor-General, Her Excellency MS Quentin Bryce AC.
Narelle was born in 1960 and grew up in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, in a family who spent every spare moment pursuing interests in visual and performing arts. While studying for a Bachelor of Education degree, Narelle majored in design and printmaking. Then followed several years teaching at the Queensland School for the Deaf, living and breathing picture books and sign language. Narelle also tutored in Language and Children's Literature subjects offered by the Faculty of Education at the University of Southern Queensland before beginning her first picture book, Leaf Tail (1989).
Many of Narelle's books have been inspired by natural environments she has explored, while others have featured historical, social and mathematical themes. The linocut print medium provides a distinctive quality to her illustrations which have been exhibited throughout Australia, including Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, WA, Dromkeen Children's Literature Centre, Vic, State Library of QLD, National Maritime Museum, NSW, and Books Illustrated, VIC.
Narelle works in a home-based studio in inner-city Brisbane, surrounded by family, pets, and an array of wildlife which visit their overgrown forest backyard - a pair of azure kingfishers diving into the swimming pool, a scrub turkey and its chick making their mound in a compost heap, and from time-to-time spangled drongos, boobook owls mobbed by noisy minas, tawny frogmouths, lorikeets and rosellas.
In addition to general talks Narelle offers a variety of workshops which include:
A demonstration of the stages of creating the text and illustrations for a picture book from first inspiration to finished artwork.
Hands-on writing and storyboarding activities, and hands-on drawing, design and illustrating activities.
Narelle is regularly an author / illustrator-in-residence offering a combination of workshops over a number of days tailored to meet specific educational requirements and often culminating in a presentation of student writing/illustrations.
