SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: The Storyteller’s Handbook
WORK NOTES: Common Sense Media
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: www.elisehurst.com/
CITY: Melbourne
STATE:
COUNTRY: Australia
NATIONALITY: Australian
LAST VOLUME: SATA 332
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; married, husband’s name Peter; children: twin boys.
EDUCATION:B.A. (with honors).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, children’s book author, illustrator, and artist. Worked at Melbourne’s Arts Centre; Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, lecturer in children’s literature and publishing. Member of judging panel, Koko Black creative drawing prize, 2010. Exhibitions: Solo exhibitions held at No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2010, 2013, 2015, and Tinning Street Presents, Brunswick, Victoria, Australia, 2018.
MEMBER:Australian Society of Authors (member of committee of management, 2009-10), Society of Book Illustrators (co-organizer of picture-book retreats, 2004-10).
AWARDS:Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year shortlist, 2008, for The Night Garden; Prime Minister’s Literary Awards shortlist, children’s fiction, CBCA Picture Book of the Year longlist, both 2016, both for Adelaide’s Secret World.
WRITINGS
The Night Garden was adapted as a stage musical produced in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2012, and was produced as an animated musical produced at the Melbourne Recital Centre, 2011-12.
SIDELIGHTS
Australian Elise Hurst has illustrated or written and self-illustrated more than fifty books for children, with many of her books being published internationally. [open new]About her youth, Hurst told Booked Out: “I was born in Melbourne, Australia and grew up living in the same house for my whole childhood. It had a big garden with visiting cockatoos that would hang upside down and pull leaves off the trees just to be cheeky. At night the moonlight transformed it into a magical place.”[suspend new] Although both her mother and grandfather were painters, Hurst is a self-taught traditional artist who began to illustrate books for other writers before turning to writing and illustrating her own books.
Hurst’s children’s book The Night Garden is about a little girl who is woken by the moon and followed by her cat named Strange as she sneaks out into the garden in the middle of the night. Once there, her imagination takes hold as she sees the hedges and flower beds transformed into strange shapes and creatures. The story and artwork were inspired by Hurst’s own experiences of sneaking out of bed as a child. The book was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year award in 2008. “Hurst captures the spirited imagination of children with her gorgeous book,” wrote an Educational Experience blog contributor, adding: “Her illustrations beautifully capture this mystical world.”
In her picture book Imagine a City, Hurst guides young readers into an imaginary city beginning with two children on a train with their mother. However, their fellow passengers include a white rabbit and a penguin. When they arrive in the city, they are in awe of the tall buildings, fun architecture, and gardens. The magical city features humans and animals interacting on the streets, flying pteranodons, and flying fish that serve for public transportation. “Hurst’s engrossing mashups of the urban and the fantastical present no shortage of fuel for readers’ own imaginations,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor.
Adelaide’s Secret World features a the solitary Adelaide the rabbit, who, from her home in a once busy storefront, observes life passing her by. “This rabbit’s sensitivity, her glistening, emotive eyes, and her pert ears bring to mind other anthropomorphized bunnies,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Not only do humans pass by Adelaide’s perch in the window, but also a wide array of animals, including other rabbits. Adelaide keeps busy by making figurines of the animals she sees but begins to crave real-life companionship. Eventually, Adelaide becomes so lonely that she decides to venture forth from her abode and ends up making friends with a solitary fox. “Hurst’s dazzling images will leave readers eager to puzzle out the mysteries of Adelaide’s world,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Maryann H. Owen, writing in School Library Journal, remarked: “This quiet story … will encourage children in taking the first step toward friendship.”
[resume new]Hurst gives young readers food for creative thought with The Storyteller’s Handbook: 52 Illustrations to Inspire Your Own Tales and Adventures. The text includes a foreword by standout fantasy author Neil Gaiman, whose novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane Hurst illustrated. About her handbook, Hurst told Bianca Schulze of the Children’s Book Review: “I know from my own experience that it is so much easier and so much more fun to be creative when you have something to respond to, something that fires your imagination and floods your mind with questions. So, this is a book of story ingredients where you will travel in and out of new worlds with every page turn.” The Storyteller’s Handbook includes fifty-two double-page spreads of great originality and intricacy—koalas flying through the air on a leaf, jellyfish floating near a hot-air balloon, a giant cat napping across a city street, and much more. The illustrations are in black pen and watercolors. In Booklist, Julia Smith lauded the compilation’s “beguiling mix of whimsy, surreal elements, fantastical touches, and realistic details,” with each spread easily suggesting a “hundred stories and possibilities.” Smith also appreciated the “imagination-stoking sentiments” scattered throughout to further encourage young readers.
Among her illustration projects, Hurst provided the artwork for a series of reflective books by Kobi Yamada, Trying, Seeing, and Noticing. In Trying, a child is inspired by a sculptor’s grand works in a studio, but the idea of failing makes the child hesitant to undertake a project. After offering abstracted words of wisdom, the sculptor makes a profound impression by showing the child a garden full of failed attempts. In School Library Journal, Kristy Pasquariello affirmed that Hurst’s “gorgeous pencil and watercolor illustrations”—with many sculptures of observant animals and numerous cats on the scene— are what “make the story a wonder to behold.” A Kirkus Reviews writer noted that the artwork is “heavily shaded, imparting a mysterious and ethereal quality.” Yamada’s Noticing foregrounds a painter who helps a girl learn to perceive the many details in the world around them. A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that Hurst’s “delicate lines render majestic, swirling skyscapes, ancient trees, and distant mountains.” Wth many images hidden in the landscapes and vistas, Maryann Owen of Booklist affirmed that the illustrations are “arresting and engaging” and that varied perspectives help “ensure that each turn of the page is a pleasant surprise.” [close new]
“I have always tried to be as flexible in my style as possible when approaching a manuscript,” Hurst once told SATA. “Illustration style is as important as the words for telling a story; we simply use a different language. Like choosing the right verbs and adjectives, I seek the right design, colours, lines, and tones to best describe a scene.
“I do have my own intricate pen style as well which I develop in my spare time. I have found that I am naturally drawn to certain types of scenes and characters and stories which, by allowing myself time to experiment and draw free from the constraints of a brief, are in turn giving rise to my own books. They take their inspiration from the 1920s-50s in style—everything from architecture to clothes—and are mixed with anthropomorphism and a little surrealism.”
Hurst later told SATA: “I’ve always had a deep love for picture books and artwork that tells a story, especially a story that I would like to be in. It is one of the magical joys of books—that we disappear into them for a while. Because I get very involved in stories and find it hard to be a dispassionate observer, I find it really hard to read books or watch films where I hate the characters, or where utterly irredeemably terrible things happen to them. When I write I need there to be redemption and magic and a journey because I am in there with the character and that’s what I would want to happen to me.
“I use two media in my books—writing and art—and I approach them very differently. Writing happens because I have a story I need to tell. I definitely struggle with it and usually find it a long and difficult process. I am definitely more passionate about the art and I explore it in so many ways, not just in my published work. Art has been a part of my life forever. I have drawn since I was a child, just like everyone else, but it has become an obsession and I have continued to develop that skill in as many ways as possible. Because I want to be immersed in a story, I have to develop the ways to convey that depth of experience through my work. Quite the challenge!
“The more successful writing for me starts with the character and knowing who they are and what is happening to them inside. Then I find events that allow that development to happen. If I start with a storyline first, everything usually takes a lot longer and it is not until I have that character worked out that it all comes together. I find that creating artwork is very important to my writing process too. There is a point where I begin to draw the character just doing things in the world. These things may or may not be part of the storyline, but it is like I need to follow them around and see what they interact with to get to know them better. The character usually begins with a picture I’ve painted or drawn that has an unexpectedly intriguing quality. I like to draw characters that are enigmatic because it leads me to start asking questions about them. And when you have a question, you have to provide an answer. It is a great way to grow stories.
“I love to create books that have something true at their core—something that explores what it is to be human and get through life—and to give hope, possibility, and some gentle understanding. I want people to feel like I am telling their story, whether they are adults or children, because we are exploring something that hides deep down within everyone.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2022, Julia Smith, review of The Storyteller’s Handbook: 52 Illustrations to Inspire Your Own Tales and Adventures, p. 90; January 1, 2023, Maryann Owen, review of Noticing, p. 77.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2017, review of Adelaide’s Secret World; December 15, 2020, review of Trying.
Magpies, July, 2002, review of A Dream of Bunyips Dancing, p. 29; May, 2003, review of The Elephants’ Big Day Out, p. 27; November, 2007, Jo Coward, review of Charlotte and Me, p. 28; March, 2008, Joan Zahnleiter, review of The Night Garden, p. 28; September, 2009, Jo Goodman, review of Sarindi and the Lucky Buddha, p. 33.
Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2016, review of Imagine a City, p. 64; November 27, 2017, review of Adelaide’s Secret World, p. 61; December 19, 2022, review of Noticing, p. 90.
School Librarian, spring, 2012, Margaret Mallett, review of The Pirate Suit, p. 34.
School Library Journal, January, 2018, Maryann H. Owen, review of Adelaide’s Secret World, p. 59; March, 2021, Kristy Pasquariello, review of Trying, p. 87.
ONLINE
Booked Out, https://bookedout.com.au/ (June 8, 2023), author interview.
Canvas Rebel, https://canvasrebel.com/ (October 24, 2022), “Meet Elise Hurst.”
Children’s Book Review, https://www.thechildrensbookreview.com/ (June 21, 2021), Bianca Schulze, “Elise Hurst Discusses The Storyteller’s Handbook.“
Educational Experience, https://www.edex.com.au/blog/ (February 4, 2014), “Book of the Week—The Night Garden.
Elise Hurst website, https://elisehurst.com (June 8, 2023).
No Vacancy Gallery, https://no-vacancy.com.au/ (May 23, 2018), “Interview: Elise Hurst.”
Sydney Morning Herald Online, https://www.smh.com.au/ (July 10, 2015), Kath Dolan, “Meet the Maker: Elise Hurst Recalls Her Moment of Artistic Liberation.”
Elise Hurst is a Melbourne-based illustrator, fine artist and author, specialising in children's books. Beginning as a self-taught traditional artist, she soon moved into book illustration and now combines the two in an ever-growing series of narrative artworks, set in a vintage alternate reality.
Published both in Australia and internationally, her work travels around the world as cards, prints and books. And her fine art pieces and commissions have found their homes in corporate and private collections from Melbourne to London.
elise@elisehurst.com
On My Art
Across my career, I have come to find my art being increasingly interwoven with story – and most particularly, people’s desire to participate in story. When I look back, it seems that I was always walking a particular narrative path, even when I did not yet know it.
I began as artists have for millennia – drawing and painting landscapes, still life, figure studies and portraits. I used oils and pastels, watercolour and printmaking. But I found the early still life and landscapes I created to be unengaging. I loved portraiture but it felt like a fragment separated from a greater whole. When I turned my hand to illustration, the possibilities of art began to open up, but most of the stories were very narrowly focussed and intended for a narrow age group.
And so I began to draw without first setting a narrative, to see what would happen.
These imaginative artworks were drawn purely for myself, collected into a small sketchbook. They were a strange blend of everything I had come to love – portraits within landscape, animals and realism, history and surrealism, created in etching-like drawings with flashes of colour. To my delight, I discovered a world was emerging. This first collection grew to fill several sketchbooks, and finally in 2010 I had my first solo art show “Strangely Familiar” which visited those same worlds in rich tonally realistic oils.
Moleskine Sketchbooks
The show was success – but what was most notable to me about the artwork and exhibition was hearing the stories people related to me about the worlds in my art. Whether this was the spontaneous stories people narrated when flipping through my moleskin sketchbooks or normally silent teenagers and lawyers shouting their stories to be overheard in a gallery, the importance of story to these people was reflected in their desire to share them.
This made me interested in not just story, but in storytelling as a creative act. Because although our world is rich with stories, people are often hesitant to tell their own, real or imaginary. We carve off imaginative storytelling into a part of childhood, to be abandoned when we move to adulthood. We are presented with stories after that, but we rarely participate in them. This exhibition showed me, very clearly, that this isn’t right. Not only do people crave storytelling, but they delight in it and given the right prompts, it comes naturally and honestly. I believe that working with imagination - giving it time, space and attention - is actually a necessary part of being a balanced human being. And it doesn't matter who you are, your age or what you do for a living.
And it's fun.
So I decided to focus on what I call “imaginative narrative art” – artwork that attempts to draw from people an imaginative act of story-telling inspired by illustrations of rich, though only glimpsed, worlds. These worlds are usually a blend of the natural and surreal, and are all interconnected. I incorporate fragments of the real world, but mix them up. There may be parts of historical cities, with encroaching elements of the natural world. Many different cultures may intertwine on the same page. Characters may be human or animal. Through illustration I came to know the power of anthropomorphism, the use of an animal substitute for a human character. I found these characters to be the ones that excited the most diverse storytelling. Because such characters are free of gender, age and nationality – people would take their cues from the actions and environment of the image, and involve their own ideas and preconceptions of those animals. Thus, a solitary rabbit in a coat sitting in a café can elicit laughter or tears depending on the viewer. What they “see” is unique, because so much of their experience is brought by their own imaginations and the connections they forge.
The Hot Chocolate (2010)
Between regular books, I worked on my sketchbooks and presented them to publishers and friends in the industry. I am particularly grateful to Neil Gaiman who a decade ago encouraged me to continue with this work with the (as it turns out, prescient) pronouncement “one day we will work together”. However, although publishers were genuinely supportive of my artwork, they were not confident that such a book would find a market. Finally, in 2018 I began to collaborate with author and publisher Kobi Yamada. Through conversations with Kobi, we explored the ideas of imaginative narrative art and the act of storytelling – ideas which slowly coalesced into my latest book “The Storyteller’s Handbook”.
"Yakatori Bar" from The Storyteller's Handbook (2022)
In this book the artworks are created as complete worlds with incomplete narratives, thus involving the reader in the storytelling. Additional characters move through the pages, symbolism abounds and the worlds are a peculiar blend of the familiar and fantastical that continually challenge the viewer to make sense of what they are seeing. My aim is not to tell stories, but to offer worlds, moments and seeds to help readers recognise and grow the stories they carry within themselves. To do this I have created fifty-two visions of different worlds. I hope that at least some will kindle wonder within the reader, and in that moment of wondering, free the reader to leap into their own imaginative stories. The book is introduced through a short story on the act of story telling by Neil Gaiman. It is a perfect and gentle welcome for what is to come. I have also contributed a letter to the reader and scattered some thoughts on story-telling, if people want to pause and ruminate.
This world I have created gives me such joy – not just for the scenes I get to play in, nor just for the characters I bring to life (although these give me such joy) – but for the connections and the stories that I hope will come. I hope people will laugh, and daydream, and perhaps write and draw. I hope some will share their work, and begin to build worlds of their own. I hope that I can continue to create work like this, to give people a door and watch them step through.
Elise Hurst, 2022
Elise Hurst is a writer, fine artist and illustrator specialising in a vintage alternate reality peopled by (amongst others) lions and tigers and bears. Although she most frequently creates picture books, her work has featured in situations as varied as book covers and illustrated novels, to cards and prints, cd covers, chocolates and an imaginative advertising campaign. She works most frequently in the media of oils, watercolour and ink drawings.
She lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
Download hi-res
EVALUATION FORM
Elise Hurst
Author, Illustrator
Elise Hurst is a writer and illustrator who is enthralled by the places that imagination can take you. Starting out as a traditional artist she soon discovered a passion for narrative and her work uses both visual and written languages to convey meaning. In her sessions Elise loves to equip people with the tools to draw their wildest ideas.
Where were you born?
I was born in Melbourne, Australia and grew up living in the same house for my whole childhood. It had a big garden with visiting cockatoos that would hang upside down and pull leaves off the trees just to be cheeky. At night the moonlight transformed it into a magical place.
What other jobs have you had?
For quite a while I worked at the Arts Centre in the city. It was great – like turning up for a surprise banquet each week. Sometimes I would see a play, or an opera, ballet or contemporary dance. It was full of artists and musicians working there and getting a bit of inspiration at the same time.
What themes are recurring in your work?
I have always been waiting for a magical adventure and I haven’t given up! But I never found the door to Narnia nor a magic carpet, so the magic in my stories has to be in the everyday world where anyone could find it. You will find a lot of night time adventures in my books, at that hour where we truly believe that everything is possible.
What have been the highlights of your career?
The Night Garden was a book that really captured imaginations and it has been wonderful that so many children love it. Being short listed by the CBCA saw it travel all over Australia, being performed as a play and at the Melbourne Recital Centre. My latest two books (Imagine a City and Adelaide’s Secret World) are a whole new stage for me where I am really unleashing my imagination on the world and doing what I love best.
Where have your works been published?
As of 2016-2017 my books can be found in Australia, USA, China, and Canada. My prints and cards have travelled around the globe.
What are you passionate about?
I think we need to create the world we want to live in. That means using our imaginations all of the time to make sure that big ideas have their chance. Your imagination is a tool that will help you in all areas of life – to see a situation differently, to try a new angle, to make someone laugh, to help someone understand, to colour the lives around you and make connections that we never knew were there. Being a little silly is also very important.
Haven’t I seen you before?
I have participated in a lot of arts markets over the years and had thousands of conversations with people who love stories and drawings. We might well have met!
Anything else you’d like to share with us?
Not every picture needs a story and I love to create single images that evoke a big narrative. I sell these in exhibitions and as prints and cards. To see any of this work or to order books from me please visit www.elisehurst.com/shop.
Elise Hurst Discusses The Storyteller’s Handbook: 52 Illustrations to Inspire Your Own Tales and Adventures
Bianca SchulzeBy Bianca Schulze10 Mins Read
AGES 4-8
AGES 9-12
BEST KIDS STORIES
GIFT BOOKS
GIVEAWAYS
ILLUSTRATOR INTERVIEWS
INTERACTIVE
PICTURE BOOKS
Elise Hurst Discusses The Storytellers Handbook
SHARE
An interview with Elise Hurst in partnership with Compendium, Inc.
The Children’s Book Review
Elise Hurst is an Australian fine artist, illustrator, and author specializing in books for children. Some of her most recent books include the illustrated edition of The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman and Girl on Wire by Lucy Estela, which was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia 2019 Awards. She lives in a house full of books and paintings.
From her studio, where black pens and oil paints spill across the desk, magical worlds leap into being. Like something out of Beatrix Potter or Narnia, her friends are rabbits and bears, lions and tigers—and they all have a story to share.
All of the above leads us to this conversation about Elise’s newest stunning book, The Storyteller’s Handbook: 52 Illustrations to Inspire Your Own Tales and Adventures.
Bianca Schulze: The Storyteller’s Handbook is an incredible one-of-a-kind experience that is sure to ignite the inner storyteller in young and old. It is no ordinary book. What would you like readers to know about your creation?
The Storyteller's Handbook: Book Cover
Elise Hurst: I want to take you on a journey with this book. I want to help you make discoveries on every page, but also to discover stories inside yourself. I know from my own experience that it is so much easier and so much more fun to be creative when you have something to respond to, something that fires your imagination and floods your mind with questions. So, this is a book of story ingredients where you will travel in and out of new worlds with every page turn.
What inspired you to create this book?
Elise Hurst: I have been creating narrative illustrations like these for myself for a long time. Every time I have shown them to people, I have been inspired by the flood of spontaneous storytelling people would give me, and how often they said that they wish there was more time for creativity in their lives. During the Covid lockdowns, I thought of all these people with their lives turned upside down and I thought now is the time to give them a doorway to step through. I wanted to give them something that would allow them to step out of their normal lives for a while, help them to connect with their creativity and maybe give them confidence to share their own stories with the people around them.
Even though there are no words in this book, it contains an infinite number of bedtime stories and creative writing prompts—fantastic conversations will abound! The reader gets to be the storyteller. Who do you imagine using The Storyteller’s Handbook? And how do you see them using it? Can a reader open this book to any page to begin?
Elise Hurst: This book is for everyone! It is for storytellers of any age. It is for people who have never written a story in their lives. It is for artists, writers, 5-year-olds and 95-year-olds, parents, teachers, and, of course, people who want to snuggle on a couch with the screens off and just spend time laughing and imagining together… And because we are tapping into people’s own creative minds, how you use the book is up to you. Open it to any page, look at the details, ask questions about what you think is happening and think up answers to those questions. As soon as you begin to say what you think is happening you are storytelling!
What do you hope readers, young writers, and storytellers will take away from the experience that The Storyteller’s Handbook provides?
Elise Hurst: I want to help people connect with their imaginations. Our minds are so powerful and we have so many ideas and possibilities locked within them. But our lives are so busy, with so much crowding for our attention. I hope that by spending time with this book they will really spend time with themselves and give that utterly unique imagination a chance to thrive. We all have something to say but sometimes we are afraid no one will hear us. This gives you the chance to take control, find your voice and practice using it. How that change could affect the rest of your world is an exciting thought!
Inside the book are 52 whimsical, detailed illustrations depicting strange lands, mythical creatures, curious animals, and intriguing characters. How did you decide on which art pieces you wanted to include?
Elise Hurst: Every piece of artwork was created especially for this book. I thought about all of the varied locations that could be inspiring and the creatures and characters that could live there. I also love to mix up the world, taking things out of their normal place and playing with size and expectations. I also love to have things interacting strangely – you might see something extraordinary happening like a giant fish floating down the street but only one person is noticing!
Choosing these scenes was really about thinking where did I want us to go next! Where haven’t we been? A desert, a gallery, an old town, a city, under the sea, at the edge of the stars, deep in a forest, or a temple? And sometimes the scene was all about creating a space for an emotion or a connection, and devising a way to bring it to life. And of course, I wanted these images to be beautiful and intricate, so the experience is as pleasurable as possible!
Do you have a favorite spread?
Elise Hurst: So many! A big favorite is the scary angler fish page. I love the feeling of danger, the assumptions we have to challenge, the intimacy of reading a book and sharing stories, the moment of two seemingly different creatures bonding, and the way they need each other for this moment to work. And I love the questions I have no answer to, like how did this happen? Has it happened before, what comes next, can they communicate any other way, and what are they reading? Or are they actually writing? As I sit here thinking about it I’m wondering about new possibilities that hadn’t occurred to me before!
Angler Fish Spread
A picture like this sums everything up for me that I love about this style of art — the way we are brought into a picture by its strangeness and challenged to think about it.
What was your process for creating the artwork?
Elise Hurst: I begin with a single idea. It might be a location or a creature or an emotion or a scenario. I then find photographic reference to help me draw something believable and accurate because I want these worlds to feel plausible.
This style of drawing takes a long time so as I am shading and cross-hatching, I have time to think and plan. As I create each image bit by bit, I am asking myself the same questions that the reader will ask, allowing the story to grow before my eyes. It’s a magical and intuitive process.
Award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman wrote the inspiring foreword. Can you tell us how his words in the opening pages of your book make you feel?
Elise Hurst: I have loved Neil’s style of storytelling for many years, and the way that his stories connect to the myths and legends of our past. He is someone who seems deeply interested in story itself and how we connect with it, the archetypal characters that inhabit it and the powerful themes and ideas that recur. We worked together on an illustrated version of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and when he heard I was creating this book, he wanted to be involved. What he wrote was the most joyous surprise and so completely perfect. He understands these worlds and wants to help people dive into storytelling, just as I do. I couldn’t be happier.
As a fine artist, illustrator and author specializing in books for children, what motivates you to create work for the young?
Elise Hurst: I love to create true stories. The setup of the story may be an invention but in its heart is something that is real and true, like the need to belong or the fear of failure. What I absolutely love is that when you create a story about something like that, everyone can connect with it. Although picture books are usually for children, I know that they will often be read with adults. I have had many adults contact me about the books and say how emotional they were. That’s amazing, and wonderful to think of the way that children and adults will be able to connect over these stories. I feel very lucky to be a part of that.
For parting words, is there anything else you feel we should know about The Storyteller’s Handbook or yourself?
Elise Hurst: I feel very inspired by the people I have met over the years and their unique storytelling minds. I have watched people who didn’t think they were creative at all suddenly feel compelled to invent stories and tell me about characters. I have watched them look at my art and cry or laugh, at the same pictures! It is so exciting to bring these worlds and experiences to life in a beautiful book. We need people’s voices to be heard. There is only one of each of us in all the world and our minds are precious and unique. If this book helps people to find their path, or even if it makes them smile for a while, then I am happy.
For more information, visit: www.live-inspired.com
Meet Elise Hurst
Avatar photo
STORIES & INSIGHTS
OCTOBER 24, 2022
Share This Article
We recently connected with Elise Hurst and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Elise, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
‘The Storyteller’s Handbook” is a book full of creative narrative illustrations that we have just released into the world. Although I have been working on images like this for over a decade, and have found a wonderful following for them online and through markets and exhibitions, it is the first time I have been able to merge them with my publishing career. This is such a different and interactive way of storytelling that really gets to the heart of what I love most about illustration – the way people put a part of themselves into what they read.
Elise, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m an Australian illustrator, artist and writer. My work is very old-fashioned – I use fine pen and ink, watercolour and paint some books as oil paintings. I began as a fine artist first, finding my way into illustration by accident and then realising that what I really love is to tell stories with my art. For a long time, I had two different parts to my career. There was the publishing side where I wrote and illustrated traditional picture books. And then there was my other art – paintings and drawings that were like a tiny fragment of story all by themselves. The more I created these other works, and them more I showed them to people (selling them at art markets, exhibitions, online and through card companies) the more I realised that people engaged with this work incredibly strongly and seemed compelled to spontaneously tell me the stories they saw. So strong was the response, especially from adults, that I gradually made my picture books more universal. Art is such a strong way to engage in storytelling – why should is only be for children?
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to fully illustrate the novel ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ by Neil Gaiman (Headline). This was a wonderful fusion of illustration with adult storytelling. I created more than 100 images for it, seeking to make it an immersive reading experience. He has now written a beautiful fable introduction to my new book ‘The Storyteller’s Handbook’. This book, thanks to the publisher Compendium, brings everything together and shows us that there are many ways to find your way into stories.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
There is sometimes a strange perception that art is a gift, a skill that you are born with, or not. While genetics probably play a role as to how physically suited you are to doing something – the skill is something you learn the hard way, like everyone else. What I think really is a gift, is the drive to do it, and the obsession to think about it enough that you can work through problems and continue to grow.
That journey is a hard one. You don’t really know where you are going, nor how to get there. In reality, there is no destination at all. There is just the doing. Once you understand that, it really helps because you realise that you had better find joy in the journey itself, and find meaningful moments and projects that will help you feel you are moving forward. People also sometimes don’t understand that time to experiment and play is just as important as completing the projects that earn you money. That experimentation, and a place where it is safe to make mistakes, is where you will make strides forward, discovering what you love, new areas to explore and developing a style that makes you unique.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Twins. Before I fell pregnant I had been working for 13 years without a break. I had rolling deadlines with overlapping projects that often had me working every day of the year, with a different project in the evenings so I could feel like I was taking a break. Illustration doesn’t always.
pay well when you think of how long it takes, and most people have more than one job to support it. I got to a point where I didn’t say no to any illustration job and so the years passed in a blur of work.
Then I found I was having twins. My life went from everything being about work, to a complete stop. And as I slowly began to claw back a little time to think, I realised that I couldn’t go back to how I was doing things. Couldn’t and shouldn’t. So I made a decision. It was going to be so hard to find time to work, so the work had to be worth doing. That was momentous. It changed everything. I stopped taking jobs that were not going to do anything but pay the rent. I invested more time in developing solid ideas and putting my best work into them. It was hard financially at first, but it was an investment in my future that I had neglected. I grew as an artist. I grew as a writer. I connected better with my work and understood better what I wanted to be doing. My goals shifted and I was able to make choices that would take me toward them, rather than floundering in a tight circle.
Part of that decision was to realise that I should make decisions based on what gave me joy, too. I would always need to temper that with how to make a living, but I wanted to make a future using what made me unique. There is a lot of repetition in the world and it seemed like the best chance I had was to forge my own path, honouring my own voice and ideas.
YAMADA, Kobi. Trying. illus. by Elise Hurst. 48p. Compendium. Feb. 2021. Tr $16.95. ISBN 9781970147285.
K-Gr 3--A genderless narrator learns to trust the process enough to fail in this newest inspirational picture book from the author of What Do You Do with an Idea? A sculptor works on grand pieces in a studio setting filled with towering, beautiful works as a child looks on in wonder. This child wishes to do the same but is afraid to take the chance, knowing they might fail. The sculptor provides words of encouragement in the form of gentle platitudes, i.e., "The only way to get where you want to go is take a step in that direction." As the child's self-doubt and frustration mount, the sculptor offers more advice and insight into the artistic process and showing off his own garden of failed work. While the words of the sculptor are familiar truths, it is the gorgeous pencil and watercolor illustrations that make the story a wonder to behold. The sculptor's animal statues benignly watch over almost every scene, as do a growing number of cats, including one that stands out for being orange in a sea of mostly black and white, heavily shaded imagery. The skin colors and ethnicity of both child and sculptor, in the play of gray and shadowed tones, could be almost anything. VERDICT Educators seeking an inspiring read-aloud are sure to warm to this book, which already feels like a classic, with its message of being brave enough to try.--Kristy Pasquariello, Westwood P.L., MA
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Ibacache, Kathia. "YAMADA, Kobi. Trying." School Library Journal, vol. 67, no. 3, Mar. 2021, p. 87. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A654790297/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bb4055ab. Accessed 19 May 2023.
amada, Kobi TRYING Compendium (Children's None) $16.95 12, 15 ISBN: 978-1-970147-28-5
A young visitor to a sculptor’s studio is amazed and impressed as he views the artist at work, asking, “How do you do that?”
The visitor, an older elementary-age kid or maybe a young teen, acknowledges wishing to create something like the art on view, but self-doubt at ever being able to produce such beauty prevents the kid from beginning. What follows is an ongoing, almost Socratic discussion between the visitor and the sculptor. The sculptor exhorts the visitor to try, to make an attempt, and encourages, advises, and pushes his interlocutor to learn from failures and disappointments. As the sculptor does so, he is not loath to shares his own vulnerabilities and haunting thoughts of his mortality. Gradually the visitor becomes a protege, trying and trying again. As in previous works such as What Do You Do With a Problem? (illustrated by Mae Besom, 2016), Yamada deals with both philosophical and practical questions, maintaining a grounded, direct tone without ever becoming preachy or too highly esoteric. The aspiring artist narrates in the first person from a distance of several years, treasuring the memory of the sculptor’s words, only to be interrupted at the end of the book by a new voice from a new visitor, echoing that first question. Hurst’s black, gray, and white drawings are heavily shaded, imparting a mysterious and ethereal quality. There are fleeting bits of color in the form of an orange studio cat and the sculptor’s green-tinged failures. The characters present White. Young readers and their grown-ups will find much to absorb and discuss.
A gentle, mind-expanding, and thoroughly lovely experience. (Picture book. 7-12)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Yamada, Kobi: TRYING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A644766939/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=30870753. Accessed 19 May 2023.
The Storyteller's Handbook. By Elise Hurst. Illus. by the author. June 2022.128p. Compendium, $24.95 (9781970147766). K-Gr. 5.
Neil Gaiman sets the stage for Hurst's imagination-sparking collection of illustrations with his introduction, which describes an old man single-mindedly drawing the fragments of earthly wisdom gleaned during his life-the implication being that those drawings comprise the book the reader holds. Fifty-two double-page, dream-touched scenes fill the book with a beguiling mix of whimsy, surreal elements, fantastical touches, and realistic details, all finely rendered in black pen with crosshatching and strategic splashes of watercolor. Each spread stands on its own, holding a hundred stories and possibilities in its wordless details. A pair of koalas floats through the air in a large leaf; luminous jellyfish drift near a hot-air balloon in outer space; a giant tabby obstructs a city street as it naps. With every page turn, the reader can become the storyteller and invent a tale for each image or simply soak up the illustration's wondrous details. This gives the book larger-than-usual reach, from prereaders admiring the artwork to elementary students using the illustrations as writing prompts. Imagination-stoking sentiments are interspersed to encourage youngsters in their storytelling pursuits. --Julia Smith
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Smith, Julia. "The Storyteller's Handbook." Booklist, vol. 118, no. 19-20, 1 June 2022, p. 90. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A708840776/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b2505f81. Accessed 19 May 2023.
obi Yamada, illus. by Elise Hurst. Compendium, $17.95 (48p) ISBN 978-1-970147-89-6
Yamada and Hurst (Trying) reteam for another tale about friendship between a young aspirant and an older practitioner. This time, a youth portrayed with brown skin and dark hair comes upon a silverhaired, light-brown-skinned artist seated at an easel outdoors. Asked if she's a painter, the older artist replies that she's "more of a noticer really... 1 just try to make things from what I see." Via a lengthy tete-a-tete and subsequent encounters, the elder teaches the youth to notice, too. Clouds beckon as "the whole sky is tempting me to be amazed... I see whales flying like songbirds and a dragon breathing fire." Delicate lines render majestic, swirling skyscapes, ancient trees, and distant mountains. "When we look at others...," the painter says, "we are only seeing a tiny piece of who they really are.... We can often miss the most beautiful parts of them." It's an enthusiastic, message-heavy affirmation of individual worth, reminding readers that "everything is special about you! There really isn't a single thing about you that isn't exttaordinary." Ages 5-10. (Jan.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Noticing." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 53, 19 Dec. 2022, p. 90. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A731556041/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0d25229d. Accessed 19 May 2023.
Noticing. By Kobi Yamada. Illus. by Elise Hurst. Feb. 2023.48p. Compendium, $17.95 (9781970147896). Gr. 2-5.
Yamada challenges readers to pay attention to what is around and above them while enjoying a rich visual and imaginative life. A brown-skinned girl, walking through the forest, meets a woman artist who gradually helps the child truly observe her surroundings. "When you are interested, you are curious, and when you are curious, you discover things--amazing things, about yourself and about the world." Intriguing illustrations in subdued blues, greens, browns, and oranges contain hidden objects, including dragons, a mountain range that also looks like bears, and clouds that look like horses and lions. Human faces peer out of tree trunks while real squirrels, rabbits, owls, and foxes inhabit the woods. From sweeping pen-and-ink paintings of clouds and trees to detailed drawings of soaring birds, the pictures are arresting and engaging, calling readers to study them and discover hidden images. A variety of perspectives and the seek-and-find aspect ensure that each turn of the page is a pleasant surprise. Encouraged to pay attention to their environment, young readers learn to discover the extraordinary in the everyday.--Maryann Owen
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Owen, Maryann. "Noticing." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 9-10, 1 Jan. 2023, p. 77. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A735624395/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=de9b35b0. Accessed 19 May 2023.