English artist Emily Gravett talks about life on the road and her first book

Wolves is about a rabbit who borrows a library book and discovers that wolves eat rabbits. Were you surprised when it was selected as a finalist for one of Britain’s top children’s book awards?

I was totally amazed. I was thinking I was going to come out of college, and I was going to slog around to lots of agents and lots of publishers and probably get nowhere. And instead, I entered Wolves into a competition and that’s how it got published. I already had a contract by the time I left college, and then I thought, “Well, that’s great, but it’s a bit of a fluke.” I really didn’t think it would be half as successful as it has been.

You quit school at 16, left home at 17, and spent the next eight years traveling around England, Wales, and Scotland, living in trucks, a caravan, and a bus. What was that like?

It’s quite hard work. A lot of it has just to do with general, day-to-day living. You’ve got no running water. So it’s a lot of going to fetch water and going to fetch wood and storing stuff up. Even the cleaning takes a very long time, because obviously there’s no vacuum cleaners or electricity, and you’re cleaning up wax and dog hair and soot. Then my partner and I would do agricultural work, as well—apple picking. I didn’t enjoy that very much. I’ve got a low boredom threshold.

Did you settle down once your daughter, Oleander, was born?

No. She was a year old when I left the road [in the late ’90s]. I didn’t really want to bring her up on the road. I wanted her to go to school and things like that. Also, I stopped living on the road because there weren’t any more travelers’ festivals. I’d grown up a bit, and the fun had gone out of it. It felt a bit dead end-y, really.

Why did you decide to return to school?

When I moved into a house in the Pembrokeshire countryside, I felt like I lost my identity a bit. And I got really, really very bored. Of course I had a small baby, so I was at home. We were miles and miles from anywhere, and I started reading picture books. My partner started doing a plumbing course, and I looked through the prospectus and thought, “Maybe I should start doing a course, as well.” I picked art foundation because I’ve always drawn. I didn’t really think I could actually go to university until I started the course. Then within a day I thought, “Wow, you’ve got to go to university now.”

You moved back to your hometown of Brighton, England, to study illustration. Did you enjoy being back in school?

I hated the first year and a half with a passion. I loved the drawing, but at 28 I was the oldest student in my class. I felt frustrated with my own work, frustrated with the tutor, and frustrated with the other students, and I hated the way it was structured. I think I just wasn’t used to having to do something and being somewhere every day.

When did things change?

Once I started to make books, I started to realize that that was what I was interested in, and I forgot about thinking I should be doing something else.

After all you’ve been through, do you feel like you’ve discovered your calling?

It does feel a bit like that, which sounds a bit sort of lame, really, doesn’t it? It sounds like some sort of religious conversion, and I’m not at all religious. But yeah, I do feel like I’ve woken up. People always tell me that when you hit 30, you suddenly start to know yourself, and I think they might be right. I’ve started to realize that this is what I want to do with my life.