Sophie Blackall Books In Order

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Sophie Blackall is an Australian author and illustrator who has said that she learned how to draw using a stick on the beach. As a teenager, she earned her degree in design and this provided the enlarger machine, bromide and Latraset skills she needed to be the perfect designer.
Over the resulting years, she would be kept busy writing household hints columns, working on DIY TV shows and painting the robotic characters commissioned by several theme parks in Australia.

In the year 2000, she was captivated by the city of New York and managed to convince her husband to move to the United States. After two months pounding the streets with the help of an agent, she could not find a job and had to use her return ticket for rent.

But just when she thought she would have to go back home, tail between legs, she received a fax from “The New York Times,” which had paid the commissions for nine of her illustrations.

Blackall’s initial work was the springboard she needed and she would work a variety of jobs after that. Besides her illustrations, she also got several editorial jobs and also worked on several animated commercials for some companies in the UK.

Sophie began working as an illustrator for children’s fiction works as she collaborated with several writers on both sides of the Atlantic. The first illustrated fiction work she did was Shirin Yim Bridges “Ruby’s Wish,” which would become a winner of the 2003 Ezra Jack Keats Book Award.
She would eventually start writing her own children’s fiction works even as she collaborated with other authors. By 2016, she had been the illustrator of more than thirty children’s fiction works including the very popular Ivy and Bean works.
For some of her novels, she never met her collaborators as they worked via email. Some authors that she has worked with over the years include Meg Rosoff and Jacqueline Woodson.
Besides her writing, she has also worked with magazines and newspapers where she has done editorial illustrations and TV commercials.

Being the weirdo that she is, Sophie Blackall usually hides a picture of a whale in all of her works since she loves Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” so much.
Having worked with so many authors, she believes that illustrations are some of the most important aspects of picture books. As such, she does feel like authors should acknowledge the role of illustrations and hates it when authors who have had illustrators work with them refer to works as my book.

Sophie had a scare when she injured her hand while working for “Save the Children” as a volunteer. She had to undergo physical therapy and while she initially feared that she would have to give up precision drawings, she opted to change her drawing techniques instead.

Since she was interested in developing artists and writers she developed a farmhouse in New York that she converted into a retreat venue. In the rare moments when she is not working on her illustrations or writing, she can be found wandering flea markets or baking cakes for her children.

“Hello Lighthouse” by Sophie Blackall is the marriage of glowingly imaginative images with sweetly nostalgic and wonderful lyrical text. It is a delightful and sparklingly special gem that tells its readers why lighthouses were so historically essential and significant.

The lighthouse keeper would often have to deal with tedious but essential work to ensure the lighthouse was working and most of the time they would also be under immense pressure.
The lighthouse keeper in Hello Lighthouse suddenly falls chronically ill, which means that his wife needs to step up until he gets better. She now has to ensure that the light has to be constantly beaming and shining to warn passing traffic of rocks and other dangers under the oceans.

She does this while also taking care of her husband and nurses him through a fever in what could be a severe case of pneumonia.

The work is a celebration of a past era that glorifies the sea and the magic in it while paying homage to the people that kept the lighthouse functioning by all means necessary.

Sophie Blackall’s “Missed Connections” is a story about chance encounters between strangers. These chance encounters often have magical charm that makes one think they could have met their soulmate.

People that think about this long enough usually get their imaginations on overdrive thinking about what could have been and a wish that their dream partner is also thinking about them.

Missed connections are often punctuated with an electric current of possibility though they often reconnect old friends and relatives that you may have lost touch with. Regardless of what is the intention, there is no stopping the magic that is found in these chance encounters.
This work comes with several missed connections collected from a variety of websites that are embellished with the expressive paintings by Sophie Blackall the award winning illustrator.

Blackall expertly portrays the weight of each missed connection using watercolors and Chinese ink as she adds tender, quirky, comical, and wistful flavors to the posts. The best thing about the novel is that Sophie manages to incorporate her own version of what if into the missed connections.

“If You Come to Earth” by Sophie Blackall is a work written in the form of a letter. The letter is addressed to an alien who is a visitor to planet Earth that has the letter read to him by a child.

It is a description of the world from the solar system, the Earth and the people that live in it. It explores the diversity of activity and human lifestyles, the different animal species and makes the conclusion that Earth is a home planet for all of us.

It is a novel about the wonderful diversity of the world, its many species and the connections between all of us.
Just like in her other works, Sophie writes resplendently beautiful illustrations done in watercolors and ink. She makes gorgeous color palettes and makes lovely scenes with expressive human faces.