Biography
Keith Gordon Campbell was born in a steamy, exotic place with wildebeest and other ungainly creatures. But he was promptly packed off to spend his tender years on a damp and salty island nation in the Far North, where wild winds rattle your windows and turn one’s umbrella inside out.#In the shadow of a looming black castle, Keith was educated in an old, turreted school with ghosts and secret passages and stuff. There he learned to love all things ghoulish, ghastly and rather gothic. He wasn’t one for chasing after balls or playing leapfrog; he preferred, even then, to find quiet corners where he could write peculiar stories and illustrate them with funny characters.#Later, he attended an even older university (though with less turrets) and graduated with a Masters in art history. That,it turned out, wasn’t a terribly useful trade (in fact, it’s not a trade at all), but somehow or other (he could never quite explain how) it turned him into an interior designer — in Hollywood of all the unexpected places!#But Keith never could stop thinking up stories and pictures to go with them. They kept piling up inside him, ’til he realized that if he didn’t get them out, he would almost certainly burst. He busied himself sending manuscripts to publishers and building a portfolio of artwork, until finally somebody noticed how hard he was working and decided to make him an author. He has written and illustrated Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters and The Mermaid and the Shoe.
Awards
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Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters
2013 - Best Children's Books of the Year, Bank Street Children's Book Committee, Winner
2013 - CCBC Choices, Cooperative Children's Book Center, Commended
2013 - Golden Kite Award, Picture Book Illustration, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Winner
2013 - New Illustrator Award, Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, Commended
2013 - Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List, Fuse 8, Elizabeth Bird, Commended
2012 - 100 Magnificent Children's Books, , Winner
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The Mermaid and the Shoe
2014 - 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2014, New York Public Library, Winner
2014 - Best Children's Books of 2014, Kirkus Reviews, Winner
2014 - The Globe 100: The Best Books of 2014, The Globe and Mail, Winner
2014 - Top 2014 Mighty Girl Books For Younger Readers, A Mighty Girl, Winner
Picture Books
The Mermaid and the Shoe, 2014
Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters, 2012