Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
It could be a scene from one of Andy Griffiths’ bestselling children’s books: the author gazing at ever-smaller versions of himself standing in the palm of his hand, while another Andy looks down from the branches of a tree.
The unusual sculptural tribute to the 2026 Children’s Laureate by artist Ronnie van Hout has been unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra on Friday.
“This is an incredible honour, both for me and my work as a writer, but also for children’s writers in general, it’s really nice to have the importance of children’s writing recognised,” Griffiths told AAP.
“This is an incredible honour, both for me and my work as a writer, but also for children’s writers in general, it’s really nice to have the importance of children’s writing recognised,” Griffiths told AAP.
The author doesn’t actually know how many books he’s sold over the past three decades, but says the number is somewhere between 20 and 25 million globally, with titles including the JUST! series, The Day My Bum Went Psycho, and the especially popular Treehouse series.
These were illustrated by Terry Denton, who died on Monday at the age of 76, having also written and illustrated more than 30 of his own children’s books.
Denton would be greatly missed and was beloved both in real life and as a character in the Treehouse series, Griffiths said in a statement.
“Working and playing with Terry over three decades has been an incredible honour and a pure delight,” he said.
”I’ve never laughed so hard as I did when working with him, whether in the writing room or on stage.”
The Treehouse publishing phenomenon started in 2011 with the 13-Storey Treehouse, with a new book each year until the 169-Storey Treehouse was published in 2023.
Following the adventures of Andy, Terry and slightly-more-sensible Jill, the famed Treehouse has a shark tank, a room of exploding eyeballs, and a Ninja Snail Training Academy – examples of the madcap inventiveness that has endeared the series to generations of readers.
Just like the storyline in which Andy and Terry find themselves in a last-minute race to finish their book for angry publisher Mr Big Nose, van Hout was at the gallery still painting in the days before the “portrait” was unveiled.
“I’m a great believer in pencils down … I’ve just got to speed up my painting, it’s sort of done, it just has to come together,” he told AAP.
The artwork is being shown for the first time alongside the exhibition Brainstorm: Inside the mind of Andy Griffiths, which displays more than 130 items from the author’s personal collection.
These objects have inspired him throughout his career, and Griffiths hopes they introduce kids to culture outside the mainstream, while encouraging them to follow whatever their interests are.
As for the future of children’s literature, he sees the biggest issue as cuts to school libraries, after recent reports of the proposed redeployment of teacher-librarians at Catholic schools in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.
Griffiths said he was horrified by the development.
“Literacy lies at the heart of every single subject, what a kid needs is that imagination and wider knowledge that reading gives you.”
