Background

Aaron Blabey was born on January 1, 1974, in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. An only child, Aaron’s family frequently moved around during his youth.

Career

Before Aaron started his career as the author/illustrator, he spent his early years in another creative arena - acting. He’s also dabbled in a number of other professions such as a grape-picker, model, video store guy, advertising copywriter, comic-strip creator, a designer, a screenwriter, and a college lecturer. Apart from the grape-picker, model, and video store guy, Aaron worked alongside actors Hugh Jackman, Guy Pearce, Jacki Weaver, Bryan Brown, Ben Mendelson, and Joel Edgerton in numerous TV shows, movies and plays throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

During his 15-year acting career, in 1994 Aaron received an ACCTA Award (AFI) for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Television Drama; The Damnation of Harvey McHugh. In 2000 he was nominated for his guest-starring role in the Australian police drama, Stingers. But Aaron didn’t feel as if he fit in and began pondering life’s big question - "What is my purpose? Who am I?"

In the early 2000s, Blabey started painting. His works were displayed around Australia in six solo exhibitions between 2004 and 2006. By 2005-2006 he left acting and embraced his new creative direction.

The first book Aaron ever wrote, Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley was written on toilet paper and today hangs proudly in his home. He began writing the story on his plane boarding pass. During the day the story developed. Unfortunately, the people he was staying with were fast asleep and Aaron had run out of boarding pass to write on. Unable to find anything to use Aaron popped into the guest bathroom and made use of an abundant supply of paper – toilet paper.

Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley were born and printed just as Aaron had written them. After the success of the 2007 release of Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley (Penguin Books Australia), Aaron created his second picture book, Sunday Chutney (Penguin Books Australia) in 2008 followed by Stanley Paste (Penguin Books Australia) in 2009.

The Ghost of Miss Annabel Spoon (Penguin Books Australia) was released in 2011 followed by The Dreadful Fluff (Penguin Books Australia) in 2012, Noah Dreary (Penguin Books Australia) in 2013 and The Brothers Quibble (Penguin Books Australia) in 2014.

2014 saw the release of Pig The Pug followed by more in the Pig series, Pig the Fibber in 2015, Pig the Winner 2016 and Pig the Elf just in time for Christmas this year from Scholastic Australia.

The Bad Guys series (Episode 1) was released through Scholastic in July 2015 quickly followed by Episode 2 – Mission Unpluckable in November of 2015. In May 2016 Episode 3 – The Furball Strikes Back hit shelves followed by Episode 4 – Apocalypse Meow released last month.

Aaron’s picture book for adults, Babies Don't Suck (Pan Macmillan) was released in 2014. In addition to Pig the Fibber and two in The Bad Guys series, Aaron released three stand-alone titles also through Scholastic; Thelma the Unicorn, Piranhas Don't Eat Bananas and I Need A Hug. Don’t Call Me Bear was released in 2016.

Today Aaron lives in the Blue Mountains of Australia with his family and devotes his time to writing, illustrating, and advocating for children.

Achievements

• Aaron Blabey has won a CBCA (Children's Book Council of Australia) Book of the Year award for Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley, an AFI Award, and his book The Ghost of Miss Annabel Spoon won the Patricia Wrightson Award in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and also won a Children's Peace Literature Award. Aaron has been included on the Smithsonian Institute's Notable Book List and has been a National Literacy Ambassador.
  
  In addition to these honors, his ghost story was recently recorded by one of his all-time favourite artists – Nick Cave – and in May 2015 his book The Brothers Quibble was read by an estimated 500,000 children as part of the National Simultaneous Storytime.
  
  In the field of acting, he is probably best known for his lead roles in two television dramedies, 1994's The Damnation of Harvey McHugh, for which he won an Australian Film Institute Award, and 2003's CrashBurn, before retiring from performance in 2005.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Pig the Stinker

    (Pig likes to be smelly, so he rolls around in the garbage...)

    2019
  • I Need a Hug

    (Everyone needs a hug in this new, irresistibly funny pict...)

    2018
  • Pig the Winner

    (The world's greediest pug won't play fair, and he'll do j...)

    2016
  • Pig the Elf (Pig the Pug)

    (When Pig yips at Santa and finds himself joining in on th...)

    2017
  • Pig the Star

    (A hysterical and cautionary tale about stealing the show ...)

    2018
  • The Bad Guys in Do-You-Think-He-Saurus?!

    (The Bad Guys have flown through outer space, made it back...)

    2018
  • The Bad Guys in the Baddest Day Ever

    (All hail Crown Prince Marmalade! Surrender to his evil ma...)

    2019
  • The Bad Guys in Attack of the Zittens

    (This New York Times bestselling illustrated series is per...)

  • The Bad Guys in Superbad

    (The Bad Guys have strangely acquired SUPERPOWERS! But the...)

    2018
  • Pig the Fibber

    (Pig was a pug, and I'm sorry to say, he would often tell ...)

    2015
  • The Bad Guys in Intergalactic Gas

    (The Bad Guys are back to save it! Sure, they might have t...)

    2017
  • Pig the Tourist

    (Pig the Pug is causing havoc and hilarity as he travels a...)

    2020
  • Piranhas Don't Eat Bananas

    (Everyone knows that piranhas don't eat bananas - except f...)

    2017
  • Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley

    (Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley are the best of friends....)

    2008
  • The Bad Guys in The Furball Strikes Back

    (The Bad Guys are about to have a very BAD day! Mr. Wolf a...)

    2017
  • Don't Call Me Bear!

    (Koala is sick of being called the wrong thing. Koalas are...)

    2019
  • Thelma the Unicorn

    (Thelma dreams of being a glamorous unicorn. Then in a rar...)

    2017
  • The Ghost of Miss Annabel Spoon

    (Life is cursed for the townsfolk of Twee. The ghost of Mi...)

    2014
  • The Dreadful Fluff

    (Serenity Strainer was perfect. But then she discovered so...)

    2013
  • The Return of Thelma the Unicorn

    (Her fans all went berserk. But this time Thelma had her f...)

    2019
  • The Bad Guys in The Big Bad Wolf

    (When Mr. Wolf is blown up to Godzilla proportions, the Ba...)

    2019

Views

Quotations: "There is an entire world of amazing ideas out there waiting to be read and absorbed, but that world remains locked without the ability to read. ‘Connecting’ to stories is something that became a pivotal part of my life when I was very young and I can’t really imagine a world without the joy of discovering awesome new things by reading, whether it’s online or in a lovely old-fashioned book."

"I get to send my thoughts and feelings out into the world in a charmingly analogue and old fashioned way and then when I visit schools or check my webmail, I get to experience the responses of those who’ve embraced them. Best. Job. Ever."

"I think I’ve sold a lot of ideas that maybe have been quite poorly executed, purely because the energy behind them is in the right place, maybe, I dunno. This is the thing, that singular focus I was talking about. With painting, it never occurred to me once I was inside of it that I wasn’t going to be a painter for the rest of my life. It’s all-encompassing, as it was when I was an actor before that. Making picture books is the first thing I’ve ever done where it’s something I wasn’t particularly into. I got into painting because I loved paintings and acting because I loved movies. I didn’t with this. I find a lot of picture books quite disappointing I have to say and a lot of them are not as funny or as sharp as I’d like them to be. I think a lot of them are over-written, so it didn’t come from a passion for the form necessarily."

“My sense of humor was a bit naughtier than you will often find in the children’s book world, which is often softer and warmer and reassuring, and a bit of a liability for a while.”

Membership

Blabey is a member and supporter of The Alannah and Madeline Foundation who work to protect children from violence.

Personality

Blabey grew up in regional Victoria, moving around a lot as a child, and so books, notably Herge’s Tintin, were a refuge. He spent all his early childhood drawing and loved it and then when he went to high school there was a boy … and he could draw better than anybody and he looked at his drawings and just gave up, just bailed.

Physical Characteristics: Aaron Blabey is left-handed.

Interests

• Artists

  Tibor Kalman

Connections

Blabey met his future wife, speech pathologist Kirstie Hutton, in 1998, they were married in 2000 and left Sydney in 2004 afterward. The couple has two sons.

Wife:

Kirstie Hutton

References

• Author's Aaron Blabey Official Website