Ingpen, one of only two Australians to be awarded the internationally prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award, has written and illustrated more than 100 books, including Colin Thiele's Storm Boy and Alice in Wonderland. He wrote The Idle Bear, an imagined conversation between two toy bears, to mark the birth of his first grandchild.
Ingpen doesn't have much time for digital picture book productions filled up with literal "graphics and pictures" or the illustrator "who is occupying the page for their own purposes as an artist".
The most successful picture books, he says, are those in which the illustrations amplify the text, not dominate it.
"There are two spaces," Ingpen says. "One is the space you can fill, if you are competent enough as an illustrator, and there is the space you don't, and leave to the reader to fill with their imagination. You don't communicate unless you leave room for the reader to engage their curiosity and imagination and place themselves in the story."
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