By Emma Chong

I asked Oliver Jeffers, award-winning author, illustrator and artist what he’d wanted to be when he was small. The answer was pretty quick.
‘I wanted to be a race car driver.’
What happened, then?
‘Uh... I figured out I wasn’t very good at driving. No I’m just joking, but I always knew I’d do something with art. I didn’t really know what I wanted and I didn’t think too hard about it but I knew I always wanted to do something with art.’

So after a glass of water and half an hour of conversation, at the request of Time Out KL Oliver Jeffers took out his pen and drew something for us. ‘Sorry, it’s a bit random,’ he said, without really sounding very apologetic. The result was a drawing of a bird sitting on a television, in front of a tree stump, each one labelled in block letters, for the uninitiated. Not entirely surprising coming from the man who has created such diverse characters as a homesick penguin, a book-eating boy and a bear who chops down trees.

But to backtrack a little, what was it that made him first get into making picture books? Jeffers launches straight into it without preamble, although he does adjust his hat first for good measure. ‘I’ve always loved picture books, and I’ve always been interested in art, and in my art I’ve always been interested in how words and pictures go together, and picture books are the perfect platform for that. But I’m also compelled to tell stories; I come from a rich background of story-telling, everyone in Northern Ireland embraces telling stories.’

The success of Jeffers’ story-telling speaks for itself. His first book ‘How To Catch a Star’, lovingly played out in watercolour wash, is about a small boy who loves stars so much that he wants one of his own. It was accepted the minute it landed on the publisher’s desk, and has even been adapted for the stage in England. ‘Lost and Found’, featuring the aforementioned homesick penguin, won two awards, got shortlisted for another, and was made into an animated feature by Studio AKA. And his latest offering, ‘The Great Paper Caper’ chronicles a whodunnit set in a forest, centring around a shady axe-wielding bear. It was shortlisted for the 2008 Roald Dahl Award, and is already a favourite with children and parents alike, with its endearing characters and beautiful, whimsical spreads. In fact between them, the five picture books Jeffers has crafted have already won three awards and been shortlisted for four more.

But what about the onslaught of PSPs and other technological advances that could spell the death of traditional picture books? Jeffers has been slouched against the cushions, but straightens up for this question. ‘It’s funny, we were talking about this today, it’s ironic that I think some of the best picture books that have ever been created are being created right now. So the quality is way up, but the quantity is going down. And I think it’s partly other distractions, like PSPs and things like that, but only partly, I think the bigger influence is the parent-child relationship or the teacher-child relationship where story-telling isn’t being embraced the way that it used to be. So I hope that will change, if there’s anything I can do to help that I certainly will.’ The idea of picture books, or even books becoming obsolete, isn’t even worth thinking about. ‘People did talk about it with CDs going away, you know, and that the same thing’s going to happen and it’s all going to go digital. But people forget that CDs were only around for about 20 years, whereas books have been around for thousands of years. I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s just completely different.’

Jeffers has been releasing a picture book a year since 2004, and has no intention of slowing down. With the volume of work he creates for himself (he works on other art and is a co-founder of the art collaborative OAR) he’s got a lot coming out soon, although annoyingly he won’t let slip any details. ‘I’m working on another book now, and that should be finished by this September. It’s a very different sort of book but I’m not going to get any more into it…’ he says, shaking his head with a cheeky smile.

So what’s next is anyone’s guess, but there are definitely more books in the pipeline. ‘Yeah definitely, I’d say it’s the backbone of what I do, it underpins everything else. So I’ll be making picture books for a long time. I think the second that I get bored doing it will be the second that I reconsider, but I don’t foresee that happening for a very long time.’

What’s the moral of the story, then?
‘I try to stay away from being overly preachy in the books, I just want to entertain; my job, I think, is to create books that are stories no more, no less, and if positive morals are coming through because of that, that’s a bonus but it’s not the point. But the moral of ‘The Great Paper Caper’ is...’
Don’t steal trees?
‘Don’t chop down trees to make paper planes and then get caught doing it.’
So don’t get caught.
Oliver Jeffers laughs. ‘Yeah, don’t get caught. Or if you see a bear, report it.’

For more on Oliver Jeffers, please visit www.oliverjeffers.com