With over five million copies of his books sold world-wide, Graeme Base is highly acclaimed as one of the best-known and leading creators of picture books, the earliest type of fantasy a child can read. His humorous stories and superb illustrations have captivated many generations for the past twenty-five years.

Childhood
Graeme was born in England in 1958 and enjoyed a childhood straight out of a storybook; along backyard, nearby woodlands to explore, summers at the seaside, parents who encouraged his love of music and drawing, (his father was an engineer and his mother a pianist), and an older brother and sister with whom to invent games and make mischief. Graeme also had plenty of time to read and imagine. His favorite books were Alice in Wonderland, with its often bizarre worlds and characters marvelously illustrated by John Tenniel, and Kipling’s Just So Stories, with dynamic etchings of various beasts. At the age of eight, Graeme and his family migrated to Australia and settled in Melbourne. During family road trips his young mind was indelibly impressed by the vast and ancient landscape of rural Victoria, the startling colors of the bush, the shape of the rugged coastline, and the extraordinary native birds and animals. Graeme was also a huge science fiction and fantasy fanatic and by the age of ten had produced his first “book;” A Field Guide to Monsters of the World. Five years later, Graeme sold one of his dragon pictures for $15, and from that moment he dreamed of making drawing his career and began his pursuit to become a professional artist.

College and Career
Graeme studied graphic design at Swinburne College of Technology, where his lecturers were hard pressed to coerce him into notincluding a dragon in whatever project he was working on. After graduating with a Diploma of Graphic Design in 1978, he spent a rather brief and unhappy period working in a string of design studios before eventually being sacked for incompetence. He spent his last pay check preparing his folio to showcase to book publishers, with the hope of getting some illustrating work.

Books
The first publisher with whom Graeme met was impressed and suggested he try creating something with an Australian theme. Graeme was electrified about the prospect of designing his own picture book and immediately set about drawing the unique Australian animals that first captivated him as an eight-year-old. Within weeks of sending his work in, Graeme received the magical phone call. My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch was published in 1983. “Here was something new and original, yet clearly within a tradition, too: it had all the rollicking fun of children’s classics by Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear or Norman Lindsay’ “The Magic Pudding,”wrote Walter McVitty about My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch in 1983. Graeme’s next book, Animalia, received international acclaim when it was first published in 1986 and has since achieved classic status, with worldwide sales nearing three million copies.

Wannabe Rock-Star
Graeme is also a passionate musician and composer. He formed a band called Rikitikitavi that played the Melbourne music circuit in the early 1980’s. The band’s lead-singer, Robyn, was also an artist and the pair hit it off immediately. They married in 1981. Since then, Graeme has composed an orchestral version of The Sign of the Seahorse, which was performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2001; the CD to accompany The Worst Band in the Universe; and a musical stage adaptation of My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch, which premiered at the Victorian Arts Centre in 2006 and toured regionally in 2007. He has recently completed writing a musical stage play based on Jungle Drums, and is one of the Executive Producers for the Animalia TV series now screening around the
world, for which he also co-wrote the opening theme with Yuri Worontschak.

Wildlife
Graeme has held a lifelong interest in wildlife and natural history and has travelled the world studying animals in their native landscapes for inspiration in his picture books. Many of the wild animals he witnessed on safari in Africa became influential in the development of The Eleventh Hour, a sleuthing adventure story featuring exotic animals. Similarly, his experiences snorkeling and scuba-diving in Martinique led to the setting for The Sign of the Seahorse. Photos from his most recent family trip to the Galapagos, Machu Picchu and Antarctica are currently filed away – for a future picture book, perhaps…

But for all his travels, Graeme’s favorite place is at home with family and friends; a theme which is explored in his picture puzzle book Enigma, published in 2008. Graeme lives in Melbourne with his wife, Robyn, and three wild and wonderful creatures of their own: James, Kate, and Will. When he's not drawing, Graeme spends his time writing music, jamming with his kids, and dreaming of their next overseas adventure. The Art of Graeme Base by Julie Watts was published in 2008 to celebrate twenty-five years of Graeme Base creations. An exhibition entitled The Art of Graeme Base was presented in November and December 2008, at MARS Gallery in Port Melbourne.  He is a member of the Australian Society of Book Illustrators.  His newest book, The Legend of the Golden Snail, will be published in late 2010.