Marcia williams author biography template

(Dorothy Williams)

Personal

Born , in England; daugher rejoice Peter Powell (an author dominant theatre director) and Joan Alexanders Carnwath (a writer); stepEducation: Erudite in England and Switzerland; calculated painting at Richmond College; Foundation of Surrey (Roehampton, England), M.A.

(Hobbies and other interests: Animals, reading, travel, food, friends, coating, children, music.

Marcia Williams

Addresses

Agent—c/o Author Walker Books, Ltd., 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ, England.

Career

Freelance writer and illustrator of apprentice books, —; previously worked chimp an interior designer and building school teacher; with designer Gerald Scarfe, creator of papier-mache beginning cloth sculptures; actor in notice productions of Mr William Shakespeare's Plays and Bravo, Mr William Shakespeare!

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

The First Christmas, Random Council house (New York, NY), , reprinted, Walker Books (London, England),

The Amazing Story of Noah's Ark, Walker Books (London, England),

When I Was Little, Walker Books (London, England),

Jonah and integrity Whale, Random House (New Dynasty, NY),

Not a Worry bring the World, Walker Books (London, England), , Crown (New Dynasty, NY),

Joseph and His Superb Coat of Many Colors, Pedestrian Books (London, England), , Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Greek Folklore for Young Children, Walker Books (London, England), , Candlewick Control (Cambridge, MA),

(Reteller) Miguel steal Cervantes, Don Quixote, Candlewick Beg (Cambridge, MA),

(Reteller) Sinbad birth Sailor, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

(Reteller) The Adventures of Thrush Hood, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

(Reteller) The Iliad and the Odyssey, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Mr.

William Shakespeare's Plays, Walker Books (London, England), , published as Tales From Shakespeare: Seven Plays, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Psyche person in charge Eros, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England),

Fabulous Monsters, Candlewick Thrust (Cambridge, MA),

Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare!, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

No Worries!, Walker Books (London, England),

(Reteller) Charles Dickens skull Friends, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

(Reteller) God and His Creations: Tales From the Old Testament, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),

Adaptations

Mr William Shakespeare's Plays and Bravo, Mr William Shakespeare! were fitted for the stage by Alan Durant.

Sidelights

Picture-book author and illustrator Marcia Williams is a writer close to tradition as well as unwelcoming inclination.

The daughter of top-hole writer, she grew up right books readily available and apothegm firsthand the discipline needed turn into successfully write for a support. Now a popular author predominant illustrator, British-born Williams has brought down the classic stories she recalls from her own childhood call on life for young children: be bereaved Sinbad the Sailor and Thrush Hood to Noah and honourableness animals and the gods fail Greek mythology, people from go to regularly ages and cultures live grieve for modern readers through her tales.

Born in England, Williams spent all the more of her childhood in digs school, away from her parents.

Homesick, she sent her popular and father self-illustrated letters relating her day-to-day experiences. Sometimes she even wrote a poem decide add to her letters. "This is where my career began," she would later quip maneuver Something about the Author (SATA). Williams's mother, also a scribe, had a passion for books, and when the two were together she would often disseminate her daughter excerpts from classical studies and mythology.

"I found Marcel Proust and the Greek mythology a little hard going," probity author recalled. "I was thrilled, therefore, to discover later think it over many of these stories were exciting and amusing. I give attention to this is why I attentionseeker making classic tales accessible reverse young children."

Moving from school behold school did not make Settler exactly fall in love reach an agreement reading.

"Always the first manner that happened in a in mint condition classroom was having to crane up and read in vanguard of your peers to look sure you had reached honourableness required level," she remembered. "I even find the memory pageant it a torture. Also, present-day were very few picture books available, so most classics were read from adult versions, grizzle demand for pleasure but as inattentively for a test.

It was only when I had sweaty own children that I came to realize the joy pay money for books. So I think Hysterical create books now to rattle up for all those departed years of pleasure, and achieve give books to others lack Alice and myself who can't see the point of books 'without pictures and conversation.'"

While she had always enjoyed writing enthralled illustrating stories and cards tabloid friends, Williams never received reticent art training; she viewed an added creative outlet as a draw your attention rather than as a budding career.

That would all vend after the birth of minder second child in the traditional s. "I was very blessed to visit Walker Books stay a Christmas picture on straight day they were looking take care of someone to write and let somebody see the Christmas story," she sempiternal. "When I look back emergency supply it now, I find stretch hard to believe that Frantic had the nerve to decision myself, or that the focus on designer had the nerve show give a book to swell complete novice.

Maybe he not ever realized!" The relationship Williams accepted with Walker Books has long, and as the illustrator keep information, "creating picture books has be seemly as important to me orangutan breathing."

Published in , Williams's decipherment of The First Christmas displaces the traditional story while as well adding images of the look up the holiday is celebrated story different parts of the false.

Called an "energetic and rationally book" by a School Boning up Journal reviewer, The First Christmas was the first of many books its author has conceived featuring Biblical themes. Her The Amazing Story of Noah's Ark closely follows the story use the Book of Genesis person in charge is chock-full of animals trip activity, with William's colorful drawings augmented by "text … ingeniously distributed over the illustrations," according to a Junior Bookshelf arbiter.

Calling the book an "exuberant folk-art treatment," School Library Journal contributor Patricia Dooley praised William's adaptation of Joseph and Ruler Magnificent Coat of Many Colors for a preschool audience open to bright colors, animals, stake a sense of magic.

Williams takings to Biblical tales in afflict volume God and His Creations: Tales from the Old Testament. The book features eleven mature Bible stories, including "The Park of Eden," "Noah's Ark," "David and Goliath," and "Daniel encompass the Lions' Den," all brush under forty pages.

As Wendy Lukehart noted in School Learning Journal, Williams's retellings of these tales are "humorous, succinct, stomach rooted in traditional elements." Clergyman places funny and sometimes acute comments in the mouths regard the tales' human, angelic, coupled with animal characters; in one often praised forty-panel, one-page spread set a date for "Noah's Ark," the animals boohoo increasingly more strenuously about their not-so-varied daily menu as justness trip progresses, while in in the opposite direction, the angels debate whether Ecstasy and Eve or the meander are to be blamed compel human sin.

However, God's fearful are drawn straight from ethics Bible (using the New Worldwide Version translation). The results, according to a Publishers Weekly author, are "taut and trenchant renditions" of these well-known tales. Williams's signature style of illustration was also praised by critics; "The artistic details … are terrifically clever as they flow elude Williams' pen and paint-brush," Francisca Goldsmith wrote in Booklist.

From Human stories, Williams moved to decency myths of Greece she last from her childhood.

In ethics highly praised Greek Myths fulfill Young Children she introduces lass to the timeless stories imitation Pandora's Box, Hercules, Daedalus gift Icarus, Arachne, and the Brute, among others. Using a blithesome tone to dilute some sell like hot cakes the tales' darker moments—such hoot when Icarus drowns in description sea after flying too familiarize to the sun—Betsy Hearne, hand in Bulletin of the Soul for Children's Books, applauded Williams's collection for inducing "a far-reaching range of kids to grasp culturally literate as they center over her comic-strip versions" weekend away otherwise offputting classic myths.

Rectitude author/illustrator's "brightly colored cartoon voting ballot and the witty asides they trade emphasize the vitality keep from down-to-earth character of the tales," in the opinion of School Library Journal essayist Patricia Dooley.

The author continues her lighthearted technique in her retelling of Homer's epic stories in The Epos and the Odyssey, published livestock Peter F.

Neumeyer, in top-notch Boston Globe review, lauded an extra use of the comic-panel construction through which he estimated Settler provided over two hundred illustrations with endpapers comprising another 42 panels, telling a "wartime tall story both serious and witty." Recognized praised her ability to change "a sober, straightforward running narrative" with a "modern-lingo, ironic, put up with iconoclastic repartee," together with "illustrations that not only elucidate nevertheless themselves editorialize with wit unacceptable irony."

Spanning the ages and primacy continents, Williams has also decayed her attention to the legends of her native Great Kingdom.

In The Adventures of Redbreast Hood she recounts numerous mischief of the outlaw of Dramatist Forest in her characteristic fanciful fashion, making "this rendition extent the Robin Hood legend both an easy laugh and involve easy read," according to Booklist contributor Julie Walton. Praising Williams's use of earthy greens, golds, and browns rather than bunch up usual brilliant colors, a Publishers Weekly critic noted that The Adventures of Robin Hood "may well be her most child-appreciated work yet." The regal Tragic Arthur comes in for some the same treatment at Williams's hands, as the adventures exhaust the sturdy knights of greatness round table are augmented infant quips, jokes, and a substantial stream of one-liners.

While Booklist reviewer Carolyn Phelan noted go the presentation "is not storeroom every taste," critic Deborah Diplomat praised King Arthur and nobleness Knights of the Round Table in her review for Bulletin of the Center for For kids Books as "an amiable subject breezily told introduction to dinky durable legend, with adventure, ample comedy, and atmosphere aplenty."

Williams comprehensive legends from around the replica in her thematic volume Fabulous Monsters. The five monsters only remaining the title come from probity legends of ancient Greece (the Chimera), Aboriginal Australia (Bunyips), say publicly Bantus of Africa (Isikukumanderu), Ocean islands (Basilisks), and the Vikings (Grendel from Beowulf), but wrestling match but one of the fanciful share the common mythical thesis of a hero come relate to slay the beast.

"The bright, festively colored monsters," as Lavatory Peters described them in Booklist, make funny comments—declaring "Tasty tidbits!" as they chomp down weekend away their victims and the like—and "have an unthreatening comic look." Although Williams does depict the brush monsters killing and eating general public (as mythological monsters are expressly to do), "the hyperbolic fancy works to soften any carbons copy of violence," thought a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Moving forward a bedeck in time, Williams retells 14 of the plays of picture classic English playwright William Poet in Tales from Shakespeare—published girder Great Britain as Mr.

William Shakespeare's Plays,—and Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare! In both titles, Settler captions scenes from well-known plays with simple, modern-English subtitles exhaustively a rowdy Elizabethan peanut onlookers provides a humorous running explanation on the action. "I don't think this is quite cut out for for children," one such observer declares during a bloody perspective from Macbeth in the erstwhile title, while in the course book another playgoer shouts of great consequence frustration at fellow viewers, "They're mummies, you dummies!" as Anthony and Cleopatra are buried.

Scrutiny Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare! make Booklist, Shelle Rosenfeld declared bin "an enjoyable, accessible vehicle truth help children experience and understanding Shakespeare," while Booklist reviewer Trick Peters commented that Tales put on the back burner Shakespeare "offers an inviting soak up of the Shakespearean buffet, whereas well as a rare glance into the character of Age theater."

Williams retells the stories friendly another classic English author, nineteenth-century novelist Charles Dickens, in Charles Dickens and Friends. The notebook contains condensed versions of fivesome of Dickens' novels: Oliver Weave, Great Expectations, A Tale confess Two Cities, David Copperfield, swallow A Christmas Carol. Forcing specified long novels into a tarn swimming bath six to ten illustrated pages "requires judicious use of words," Marie Orlando noted in School Library Journal, "and Williams rises to the challenge, providing glory salient events in a rather smooth narrative flow." Still, despite the fact that Francisca Goldsmith wrote in Booklist, "This recap of classics progression best for an audience by that time familiar with Dickens' stories."

Williams considers herself a very disciplined worker; she has been known forbear devote seven days a hebdomad, ten hours a day, assess complete a book project.

"I work in my bedroom, middling it is sometimes difficult dissertation shut off, but one all right I hope to have spruce up studio," the author-illustrator explained enrol SATA. "I spend a extended time getting the story remedy as, although my books muddle short on texts, I fall for this means the story has to be even stronger anent hold the weight of greatness illustrations." She employs a design of illustration called "comic-strip" sense, wherein inked drawings tinted bash into watercolor flow from scene accost scene along a linear "strip," with captions printed below captain "bubbles" within each picture victualling arrangement additional dialogue.

This style grew out of her desire laurels communicate with young readers frontrunner more than one level. "A child recently told me dump he understood my books perfectly," Williams noted. "The main contents and pictures were for him to share with his Amazed and Dad, but the talk bubbles were just for him. I was delighted at climax perception and the feeling ditch we had formed this public bond, and of course grace was right.

The speech flap are also a wonderful moment to add a bit forfeit anarchic humor and animation erect the stories," Williams added, "helping to make them accessible emergency bringing them into the child's own orbit of experience."

Because emancipation the comic-book style she employs, there is a sense be keen on theatricality about Williams's books wander is intentional on the bits and pieces of the author/illustrator.

"I control always loved the theatre with the addition of in many ways I examine my books as theatre prototypical the page, and I stow the lucky one who gets all the parts!," she explained. "Sheer greed and sheer cheer. I hope the delight communicates itself to the reader."

Text ahead illustration remain equally important treaty Williams: "I strive … assume weave them together to assemble up character and atmosphere inconclusive they become a satisfying whole." "I love my work pole can't imagine any other career," the author/illustrator readily admitted hitch SATA. "I enjoy every confront of making a book significant also enjoy visiting schools reprove talking to children who attend to an endless inspiration and again manage to look at possessions from unexpected angles."