Keith Gordon Campbell spent his tender years on a damp and salty island in the Far North, where wild winds rattle the windows and turn one’s umbrella inside out.
He was educated in an old, black, turreted school with ghosts and secret passages and stuff. He wasn’t one for chasing after balls or playing leapfrog; he preferred to find quiet corners where he could read, or write and illustrate peculiar stories.
Later, he attended a nearby university and graduated with a master’s in art history. That, it turned out, wasn’t a terribly useful trade (in fact, it’s not a trade at all), but somehow or other (he could never quite explain how) it turned him into an interior designer — in Hollywood, of all places!
But despite his advancing years, Keith never could shake his taste for children’s books. Among his favorites was one entitled The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Raving about this book helped Keith realize that crafting exquisite illustrated stories for kids was what he should have been doing all along. So he became an author-illustrator just as fast as he could (which wasn’t very fast). And you can only imagine his dumbfounded amazement when very soon after, the opportunity arose to illuminate the adventures of Flora and Ulysses.
"This has been,” he says, “an expansive and joyful experience. What wonderfully oddball and charismatic characters people this story. It was a thrilling challenge to bring them to life.”
Keith is the author and illustrator of Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters, which received an Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honor and a Golden Kite Award, as well as of The Mermaid and The Shoe, which is due out in early 2014. He is also the illustrator of Tea Party Rules by Ame Dyckman, due out this autumn.
He still lives in California, where one doesn’t even need an umbrella . . .and it’s not the wind that rattles your windows!
Illustrator's Website: http://kgcampbell.com/bio-2/
