Style
Gravett completed Wolves in six weeks as an Illustration course project, and added only the back endpaper spread during the editorial process. Some projects take longer but she wrote and sketched Orange Pear Apple Bear in merely 11 hours, waking one Mother's Day with the four words in her head and staying in bed for "the whole book in one go".
Gravett's books are interactive. She encouraged the pet dog to chew the dummy for Wolves, in order "to simulate the impact of the wolf's teeth". That didn't work so she chewed it herself.
She wanted Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears to look genuinely chewed, so she painted yoghurt on plain white paper and laid it in the cage of the two pet rats. They nibbled it and peed on it, which she scanned to produce background for drawing. The front cover illustration shows the title Little Mouse's Emily Gravett's Big Book of Fears, a mouse looking through a hole it has chewed, and damage along the book edges.
Little Mouse is also a movable book, with "lift flaps and a fold-out map" (quoting a review).
Read more about this topic: Emily Gravett
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