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Author Profile: Tim Wynne Jones |
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BOOKS: The Uninvited Rex Zero, King of Nothing Rex Zero and the End of the World A Thief in the House of Memory The Boy in the Burning House Stephen Fair The Maestro Rosie Backstage Lord of the Fries The Book of Changes Some of the Kinder Planets Pounce de Leon The Boat in the Tree Ned Mouse Breaks Away The Last Piece of Sky Zoom at Sea Zoom Away Zoom Upstream The Hour Of the Frog Architect Of the Moon Mischief City I'll Make You Small The Hunchback of Notre Dame (a picture book retelling of Victor Hugo's classic) Dracula (a picture book retelling of Bram Stoker's classic) Mouse In the Manger
AWARDS: Tim has won numerous awards which you can view with this link
WEBSITE: |
Some thoughts on Tim from Neverending Stories: In our first of many readings about the cat named Zoom who loves water and finds his way to sea from Tim’s picture book Zoom at Sea, Sarah (who was three at the time) would sneak peaks at the illustration on the back page which had little eyes peering out of some dark pots under the table. "What is in there?" she'd whisper cautiously. I hadn't seen the eyes at first; they weren't referred to in the story. But it's a good question to ask when reading from the many award-winning stories Canadian Author Tim Wynne-Jones has written for your children. If you don't ask "what's in there," you'll probably miss a passage or a doorway that can lead you to extraordinary places.
From Tim: “I live near Perth Ontario, Canada. We moved to Eastern Ontario from Toronto in 1988; we being my wife, Amanda Lewis, and our three children: Alexander (Xan), Magdalene (Maddy), and Lewis. The kids have grown up and moved away to Toronto, London, England, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Amanda’s still around, although she’s in Ottawa a lot, where she is Artistic Director at the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama. “We live on 76 acres of rough and tumble land. It’s a landscape that has figured prominently in my writing over the last twenty years. I designed the house we live in, finally putting to use three years of architectural training received at the University of Waterloo back in the late sixties and early seventies. That was before the school decided that maybe it would be better if I didn’t design anything that people were actually going to enter… “I left Waterloo and joined a rock band in Toronto. “I decided to return to Waterloo to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. I joined another band, there, Alabaster. We were primarily a cover band, doing songs by the Beatles, Cream, Neil Young, The Band, Credence Clearwater, Elton John, James Taylor, to name a few. We also did some original tunes, which got me writing, though it was still only a pastime. “I met Amanda the summer I graduated from Waterloo. It was 1974 and my art school mentor, Virgil Burnett, asked if I would look after his beautiful old, house in Stratford for the summer. There was a beautiful, young woman he had asked to look after his horse. I fell in love with her. (Not the horse, the girl). Amanda was working at her grandmother’s bookstore by day and at the Avon Theatre by night. At the end of the summer we couldn’t imagine being apart, so we moved to Toronto, where she was entering her second year at York University in the theatre program. “I found a job as a book designer with PMA Books. It was my first brush with publishing but on the other side of the table, you might say. Carol Martin and the folks at PMA Books were great. I liked living in a world of books and book talk. Canadian literature was on fire. It was an exciting time. It was also my first full-time job. And my last. I worked there a whole year and a half. Pretty good, eh? “Amanda and I took off for Europe in 1976 and when we returned I started up my own graphic design firm with Michael Solomon. In 1978, I decided to go back to school to do an MFA at York. The summer that I graduated from York I was so bored with school that I wrote my first novel, Odd’s End. It was just something to do – like going on a summer holiday when you don’t have any money. Odd’s End won the Seal First Novel Award. There was a $50,000 prize. I decided that this writing thing might be fun.”
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