Tohby Riddle: some backstoryTohby was born in Sydney, Australia, and has lived there since. His early years were spent at a Steiner school where a love of making things and making things up (mainly with drawings and words) flourished.
After high school, Tohby went to Sydney College of the Arts where he majored in painting and average guitar playing. After graduating he worked in a number of jobs that usually involved carrying things larger than himself. All the while he was unsure what kind of art he wanted to make. He loved illustrated books and cartoons but it never occurred to him that he could do such things. One night a friend said, "Let's make a children's story!" They did, and it was not very good, but it gave Tohby ideas …
Then Tohby got another job. He still had to carry things but it was in a small but growing publishing house. He was mailing clerk at what was then Pan Books Australia. This was a great education for him. Apart from knowing what it would cost to send a non-standard letter, weighing over 500 grams, to Queensland, he saw first-hand how a publishing house worked. He also saw what manuscript submissions looked like and what rejections slips looked like. And his kind employers introduced him to visiting authors (from Jackie Collins to Oliver Sacks) and included him in many of the publisher's functions and book launches.
The experience served him well when later he decided to try another picture book. (He had also read a terriffic book on the art of Maurice Sendak that showed in some detail how Sendak made up Where the Wild Things Are.) Knowing he had a better chance of illustrating a book if he wrote it himself, Tohby produced a mock up of a story called Careful with that Ball, Eugene! It became his first book.
The year it was released Tohby began studying architecture at The University of Sydney. He found this to be an excellent all-round education in art, design, and the making of three-dimensional objects. Interestingly, this course has a history of producing not just architects, but cartoonists, scriptwriters, film directors, comedians, set designers and art directors.
Indeed, interest from publishers and a desire to keep trying out ideas for picture books – and by now cartoons – led Tohby to make the difficult choice between practising architecture or becoming a dedicated artist and writer. He chose the latter, but his architecture training continues to serve him well – his ideas, he believes, have to be well constructed and not leak!
Since that time, Tohby has produced a number of books, cartoons and illustrations. Some of the books have been published internationally, some have received awards, and one (The Great Escape from City Zoo) had the feature film rights to it bought by a Hollywood studio.
Luckily, considering Australia's wealth of talented cartoonists, Tohby's cartoons have been able to find a regular home in the newspapers. Tohby is also lucky he didn't listen to the first newspaper art director he visited. After looking at Tohby's portfolio, he politely suggested Tohby think of another career. Tohby didn't necessarily disagree with the art director's advice – he just couldn't think of another career. So he tried to do better work.
Tohby has also visited schools, universities and writers' festivals across Australia to talk about his work and other things that come to mind, and has spent a number of years as an editor. He still believes that if you stick at something long enough, perhaps even decades, you could become an overnight success.
A Profile in Words and Pictures
Interviews, articles, information, links …
About Making Picture Books – an interview with Tohby Riddle
Comments by a number of picture book creators, including Tohby Riddle, can also be found in Libby Gleeson's excellent book on the subject, Making Picture Books
"Colour Story" – an article by Tohby Riddle, first published in Melbourne's The Age newspaper, 1998
"Interview with Tohby Riddle" – an extensive interview and article by Catherine Mah
"Trash Aesthetics and Utopian Memory"
The Tip at the End of the Street [by Tohby Riddle] and The Lost Thing [by Shaun Tan] by Kerry Mallan, Bookbird, 2005"Beautiful and Improbable Things: A Review of Tohby Riddle's The Singing Hat"
Tony Bones Entertainment – creators and performers of musical productions of The Singing Hat and Irving the Magician
Something about the Author (SATA) biography
Academia For those interested in the theoretical side of picture book discussions, Routledge, New York (and UK) have published Postmodern Picturebooks, edited by Lawrence R. Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo. Chapter 6, "'They Are Always Surprised at What People Throw Away': Glocal Postmodernism in Australian Picture Books" features a presentation by John Stephens which focuses on Tohby Riddle's The Great Escape from City Zoo and The Tip at the End of the Street and Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing (which actually features a visual reference to The Great Escape from City Zoo.)
More soon …
