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Ted Dewan is an American-born British writer and illustrator of children's books who resides in England. He is best known as the creator of the award-winning book series, Bing, now adapted into an animated television series.
Dewan was born in Boston and raised in Lexington, Massachusetts, the first son of physicist Dr Edmond M Dewan and scholar/attorney Karen Dean-Smith. He grew up with his brother, musician and artist Brian Dewan [1] and both brothers had musical and artistic aspirations from a young age. He studied engineering and electronic music at Brown University, Rhode Island where he studied with his mentor, author/illustrator David Macaulay, before working for five years as a Physics teacher at Milton Academy. [2] As well as his science-teaching duties at Milton Academy, Dewan directed various musical shows including a touring satirical student pop band.
He relocated to London where he began to make a living as a full-time illustrator and cartoonist, drawing for British newspapers including The Times (and Times Educational Supplement ), The Guardian , The Independent and The Daily Telegraph . [2] In his spare time, he performed a solo accordion act on London's comedy circuit, to mixed and "misunderstood" reviews at such venues as The Comedy Store and the Hackney Empire. Within a few years of moving to London, he met Helen Cooper, another children's illustrator and writer. They have one daughter.
Dewan and Cooper moved from London to Oxford, where Dewan worked closely with David Fickling Books, the original publisher of the Bing books. [2] His move to Oxford also saw the beginning of an eight-year pilot project to transform his residential street in the UK's only DIY redesign project designed and built entirely by its residents with guidance and funding from Bristol-based Sustrans. He was given stewardship of the writer's shed from Oxford-based author Philip Pullman in 2002, with a covenant agreed that only creative work shall take place in it, and that the shed was to be passed on freely to another maker when the time came. The shed has now been passed on and its story continues.
Divorced in 2018, Dewan now lives in Brixton, London, where he works primarily in children's television animation.
Dewan began his career with science-writer Steve Parker on a number of children's non-fiction books. Dewan's pen and ink and watercolor artwork complemented "Parker's examination of the morphology of the world's largest mammals" (and also Inside dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures). For Inside the Whale and Other Animals he won the 1992 Mother Goose Award [3] from Books for Children as "the most exciting newcomer to British children's book illustration". Concurrently he illustrated a couple of adult non-fiction books by Dr. Robert Ornstein. [4] [5]
Dewan next turned his hand to writing as well as illustrating, producing in 1994 a baseball version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff . A number of other solo writing/illustrating projects have followed since, in particular the Bing Bunny series, which has been adapted into a TV series.
The first of three Crispin picture books won the Blue Peter Award, and was a runner-up for the 2000 Kate Greenaway Medal [6] from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. [lower-alpha 1] Cooper had won the 1996 and 1998 Medals. [6]
More recently, his illustration work has featured in books related to the BBC comedy panel game television quiz show QI . In particular, he contributed "400 diagrams and cartoons" to The Book of Animal Ignorance , and various illustrations to The QI "E" Annual (or The QI Annual 2007), both published by Faber and Faber in 2007. [7]
His latest picture book with Orchard Books is about a courageous teddy bear charged with warming the heart of a troublesome boy. One True Bear (2009) was noted for its daring inclusion of actual young boys' drawings, including the "violent" ones not normally reproduced, especially in young children's literature.
In 2014 a television series called Bing based on his books began broadcast on CBeebies, produced by Acamar Films and animated by Brown Bag Films. He co-developed the series, co-wrote the pilot, and wrote or contributed to most of the scripts, while working with the animators on set and character design. The series has since become one of the most viewed programmes for children across the whole BBC, winning a BAFTA nomination and an International Emmy Award. The series features the voice talent of Oscar-winning actor, Mark Rylance. [8]
Dewan is currently developing another television animation project for children and has acted as consultant on other television projects.
Dewan began his commissioned three-dimensional artwork, including 2004's Cyclemas Tree, a 20-foot 1.5 tonne illuminated Christmas Tree made of derelict bicycles and scaffolding. In 2007, he was appointed lead artist for Oxford's Millennial celebration's extravaganza, Luminox, which featured his 70-foot bamboo spire pendulum sculpture with a flaming pendulum bob. The sculpture formed the centrepiece of a large-scale fire installation by the renowned French group Carabosse. [2] He is the creator of the Storyloom at Oxford's Story Museum, which remains from the 2012 steampunk exhibition, The Fabulous Account of Rochester's Extraordinary Storyloom. [9]
His most recent commission was a sculpture and photography/design featured on the cover of Philip Selway's (Radiohead) second solo album, The Weatherhouse.
1992, Mother Goose Award, best new illustrator, for Inside the Whale and Other Animals, written by Steve Parker
2002, Blue Peter Book Award
Best Book to Read Aloud, the picture book Crispin, the Pig Who Had It All
2015, BAFTA nomination, "Bing"
2016, International Emmy Award, "Bing"
2016, Writers' Guild of Great Britain, team scriptwriter "Bing"
1992, shortlisted for the TES information book award for his illustration of Inside the Whale & Other Animals, written by Steve Parker. [10]
1997, shortlisted for Kurt Maschler Award, integrated writing and illustration, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and named one of the Young Book Trust 100 Best Books [11]
2002, commended runner-up for the Kate Greenaway Medal, Crispin the Pig Who Had It All [6] [lower-alpha 1]
2004, named one of the Publishers Weekly Books of the Year, the Bing Bunny series of books for toddlers
Sir Quentin Saxby Blake, is an English cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator and children's writer. He has illustrated over 300 books, including 18 written by Roald Dahl, which are among his most popular works. For his lasting contribution as a children's illustrator he won the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. From 1999 to 2001, he was the inaugural British Children's Laureate. He is a patron of the Association of Illustrators.
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The Carnegie Medal for Illustration is a British award that annually recognises "distinguished illustration in a book for children". It is conferred upon the illustrator by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) which inherited it from the Library Association. CILIP is currently partnered with the audio technology company Yoto in connection with the award, though their sponsorship and the removal of Greenaway’s name from the medal proved controversial.
Victor Ambrus was a Hungarian-born British illustrator of history, folk tales, and animal story books. He also became known from his appearances on the Channel 4 television archaeology series Time Team, on which he visualised how sites under excavation may have once looked. Ambrus was an Associate of the Royal College of Art and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers. He was also a patron of the Association of Archaeological Illustrators and Surveyors up until its merger with the Institute for Archaeologists in 2011.
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The Blue Peter Book Awards were a set of literary awards for children's books conferred by the BBC television programme Blue Peter. They were inaugurated in 2000 for books published in 1999 and 2000. The awards were managed by reading charity, BookTrust, from 2006 until the final award in 2022. From 2013 until the final award, there were two award categories: Best Story and Best Book with Facts.
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The Book of Animal Ignorance is the second title in a series of books based on the intellectual British panel game QI, written by series-creator John Lloyd and head-researcher John Mitchinson. It is a trivia book, consisting largely of little-known facts about various animals, alongside factual corrections to other pieces of supposedly "well-known" trivia that, although widely believed, are not always accurate. It is a sequel to The Book of General Ignorance.
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