Elizabeth Honey

Elizabeth Madden Honey (born 7 February 1947) is an Australian children's author, illustrator and poet, best known for her picture books and middle-grade novels.

Her books have been published internationally.

She lives in Richmond, Melbourne.

From 1976 to 1986 she published a calendar of illustrations, but found children's book illustration the most rewarding work.

In 1988, Princess Beatrice and the Rotten Robber was published, her first book as both author and illustrator.

Publisher, Rosalind Price at Allen and Unwin encouraged her work and ‘she has since become an iconic voice in Australian children's literature, going on to write and illustrate a breadth of award-winning children's novels, poetry collections, as well as picture books for children of all ages.

She is known for writing that is "characteristically humorous and inventive, and features outspoken characters”.

Honey draws on family life, evident in her first poetry book Honey Sandwich.

Looking for my sandals.

Looking for my hat.

I spend all my life

doing that.

1994

In 1995 her first novel 45 + 47 Stella Street and everything that happened was published.

1996

In 1997, she won the Children's Book of the Year Award: Picture Book for Not a Nibble.

She also received the Prize Cento and the Young Australians Best Book Award (YABBA) for 45 & 47 Stella Street and everything that Happened.

1997

In 2001, she was the recipient of the Australian Wilderness Society Environment Award for Children's Literature.

Honey was born in the coal mining town of Wonthaggi in Gippsland, Victoria.

She grew up on a dairy farm, the third in a family of four.

A sickly child she became an avid reader.

After the family moved to a farm near Geelong she attended high school at Morongo Girls' College.

In Melbourne, Honey studied art at Swinburne Technical College, where she was in the second intake at Australia’s first film school.

‘The predominate traits shared by the students were artistic talent, youth and high spirits, and boundless confidence and optimism.

It was the ‘Swinging Sixties’ after all and art students were in the vanguard of taste, fashion and ideas…’

The mix of characters and talents at Swinburne had a profound influence on Honey, and the unstructured nature of the course which gave students the licence to experiment.

They absorbed films from around the world at the Melbourne Film Festival and staged the student revues ‘Braindrops’ and ‘68mm’.

‘They eat, sleep and drink the revue, with an intensity that is almost alarming.’

Laurie Pendlebury, Head of Swinburne Art School

Honey worked briefly at the ABC Channel 2, then in film, The Naked Bunyip and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, advertising at W J Haysom then George Patterson, followed by extensive travel.

Honey began work as a freelance illustrator, her commissions including drawings for newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, and stamps for Australia Post.

Mr Bleak and the Etryop premiered at the Melbourne Comedy Festival (2007).

It told the story of confused Mr Bleak, who in his drive for productivity, discovers poetry after the intervention of exuberant schoolchildren.

The play toured Victoria in 2008.

A musical theatre production of I'm Still Awake, Still!, inspired by the songs by Honey and Sue Johnson, directed by Jessica Wilson, premiered at the Melbourne Arts Centre in 2011, and toured the US and Australia in 2014.

The Age review noted "..the clever blend of comedy and song, which celebrates in the zaniest possible way the playfulness of children, while giving them a rather sophisticated glimpse into the world of music."

A theatrical adaptation of That's not a Daffodil, adapted from the book by Honey with Görkem Acaroglu premiered in Melbourne in 2015, before going on to tour Victoria in 2017.

It tells the story of a young boy who is given a daffodil bulb by the old Turkish gardener next door.

It was translated into many languages and became the first in a series, the most recent From Stella Street to Amsterdam, was published in 2020, twenty five years after the first book.