Longlist: Best New Illustrators

The Big Time for The Big Picture: Best New Illustrators longlist revealed

Booktrust has launched their Big Picture campaign with the search to find the UK’s Best New Illustrators.

Children’s books by the 27 longlisted illustrators were all first published in the UK after 2000. Ten winners will be chosen from the list by the Big Picture Committee and announced by Michael Rosen at Bologna Children’s Book Fair on 31 March 2008.

The ten Best New Illustrators will participate in promotional activity intended to raise the significance and importance of illustration. Such activity includes collaboration with Rough Guides to produce The Rough Guide to Picture Books which will be published April 2008.

The illustrators will be appearing in a range of library, festival and bookshop events and promotions throughout 2008 with the Campaign for Learning and for The Big Draw in October.

The longlist is:
Deborah Allwright
Laura Carlin
Alexis Deacon
Polly Dunbar
Lisa Evans
Shelley Fowles
Emily Gravett
Mini Grey
Laura Hambleton
Oliver Jeffers
Simone Lia
Sam Lloyd
David Lucas
Sarah Massini
Mei Matsuoka
Sam McCullen
Alice Melvin
Gwen Milward
Catherine Rayner
David Roberts
Viviane Schwarz
Joel Stewart
Il Sung Na
Kanako Usui
Vicky White
Thomas Doherty
Mungo M’Cosh

The Big Picture Judging Committee comprises author and illustrator Anthony Browne, Sunday Times journalist Nicolette Jones, Antonia Byatt, director of literature strategy at Arts Council England, and author Malorie Blackman.

The Big Picture Campaign was launched in 2007 as a new initiative aimed at promoting picture books and illustrators. Led by Booktrust in partnership with Bookstart, and supported by a range of children’s publishers, the campaign aims to stimulate confidence in the market for picture books.

Booktrust and its associates seek to build an appreciation of picture books on a number of levels: to encourage new audiences to discover picture books, to support new and emerging illustrators and to celebrate the contribution that picture books can make to a child’s development. It will also look at how picture books are valued as collector’s items and pieces of art in their own right.