Author(s): Finlay Macdonald

NZ Non-Fiction | NZ Art and Artists | NZ Biographies

Dame Lynley Dodd is New Zealand's best known author and illustrator of children's books. Her career was launched in 1973 with the publication of My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes, which she collaborated on with cousin Eve Sutton. Other picture books soon followed and in 1983 the world famous Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy was launched. Hairy Maclary's success placed Dodd in the international spotlight and the Hairy Maclary and Friends series is today one of the world's most successful series of picture books. The Life and Art of Lynley Dodd is a beautiful full-colour hardback telling the story of Lynley's early years, time at art school, teaching career, marriage and success as a children's author. The book is a pictorial history as much as a written one, and as such includes photos of the author's early years as well as the artwork she produced as she moved towards her world-renowned style - art school pieces, early political cartoons and illustrations for the correspondence school among others. The Life and Art of Lynley Dodd also includes never-before-seen working pages from Dodd's 'ideas book', character roughs of Hairy Maclary and his gang, images of text drafts and of course big beautiful reproductions of finished artwork - giving readers an insight into the painstaking labour of the creative process and the genius inherent in the end result. This beautiful book celebrates one of the country's most talented children's artists, whose work has delighted children and adults around the world for three decades.