Elizabeth Honey


Elizabeth Honey is an Australian author, illustrator and poet, known predominantly for her work in picture books and middle-grade novels. Her work has been translated into Dutch, German, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Catalan, Hungarian and Spanish, and has also been published in the United States and Britain.
She won the for Not a Nibble. She also received the Prize Cento and the Young Australians Best Book Award for 45 & 47 Stella Street and everything that Happened. In 2001 she was the recipient of the Australian Wilderness Society Environment Award for Children's Literature.

Life and career

Honey was born in Wonthaggi, Victoria. The third of four children, she grew up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. An avid reader as a child, after high school she went on to study at the Swinburne School of Film and Television in Melbourne. After several years working in film production and advertising, as well as extensive travel, she began to work as a freelance illustrator. Illustrating for newspapers like The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as providing stamp illustrations for Australia Post, she discovered she enjoyed illustrating children's books the most.
In 1988, Princess Beatrice and the Rotten Robber was published, her first book as both author and illustrator. She has since become an iconic voice in Australian children's literature, going on to author and illustrate a breadth of award-winning children's novels, poetry collections, as well as picture books for children of all ages. She is known for writing that is "characteristically humorous and inventive, and features outspoken characters".

Works

Picture books

A musical theatre production of I'm Still Awake, Still!, inspired by the songs by Honey and Sue Johnson, toured the US and Australia in 2014. The Age review noted "..the clever blend of comedy and song, which celebrates in the zaniest possible way the playfulness of children, while giving them a rather sophisticated glimpse into the world of music."

Awards and honours

1994
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2005
2008
2009
2012