Two years after relocating to Cambridge in the UK, illustrator Liz Anelli is making a quick return visit to Newcastle to launch her latest children's book, Seed to Sky, Life in the Daintree, with words by Pamela Freeman.
Anelli will also be making school visits, leading illustration workshops at Eleebana, Mayfield East and Hunter School of the Performing Arts. She will spend some time in Sydney at book launch events, before returning to Newcastle for the Newcastle Writers Festival.
At the writers festival Anelli and Seed to Sky writer Pamela Freeman will appear on Saturday, April 6, at 10.30am at The Press Book cafe for a launch event, and on Sunday, April 7, at 10.50am for a 40-minute family session (NuSpace Room x402), Bringing a Forest to Life, sharing how the illustrator and writer work together, showing images and drawing.
"Kids who come along get a pencil and some paper and become children's book illustrators like me," Anelli says.
Seed to Sky, a 32-page picture book targeting young children, follows on from Anelli and Freeman's award-winning book, Dry to Dry: The Seasons of Kakadu, which won the Children's Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall Award (the prime intention of the book is documenting factual material with consideration given to imaginative presentation, interpretation and variation of style). The pair also combined for Desert Lake, The Story of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.
Seed to Sky is full of rich detail about wildlife and fauna in the Daintree. Anelli visited the Daintree in March 2022, just before she and her husband, Mario Minichiello, moved back to the UK.
"I went up there to get as much evidence as possible, in the pouring rain, and get bitten by everything going, but we didn't die," Anelli laughs.
"I knew exactly what I was looking for ... the text was in place, but also I spent quite a bit of time in places like Cairns, which has got an excellent aquarium, and back in Sydney, the Australian Museum.
"It has lots of species - specimens of insects and birds, because you know what it's like - you go out for a walk and all the wildlife dives away.
"Moving to Cambridge has been all right because we've got botanical gardens here, and all sorts of biology experts here in England.
"It's just rather bizarre, working on a book about the other side of the world and re-creating it in a northern hemisphere studio room, but that's what imagination is for, isn't it?"
Backed by Walker Books, Freeman and Anelli have a good working rhythm after three books. The Eve Pownall award proves they know what they're doing.
Anelli says of Seed to Sky: "It's non-fiction, but it's very much a story, so we're playing with facts. It's not a textbook at all and never pretends to be, but it puts those creatures, those species, into context, and that for me is the hardest thing. You look up anything by its Latin name online, and you're certain you've found the right species, but then you've got to compare it in size to its habitat, and that isn't always quite so easy.
"So in my studio here in England, I have actual paper cutouts of sizes of things, so I can work out, 'this butterfly is this big, but what does it look like next to this kind of plant, or this kind of hopping mouse' or something like that."
As part of the storyline, the book traces the growth of the bull kauri conifer tree, which takes 200 years to reach maturity.
"In some ways, this was the hardest book," Anelli says.
"This is about a rather secretive tree that is kind of hard to pin down. It really is looking for a needle in a haystack - could you find a specific tree in the middle of a massive rainforest? There's a lot of creative licence.
"I didn't find one [bull kauri] in the rainforest. I found one in the botanical gardens. I was assured they are there, but it's several days' hike, and you've got to be an experienced explorer. But that's the purpose of books, they can take you places you can't actually go by foot."
She did have an encounter with a cassowary in the rainforest, but that's another story.
