Premiers' Reading Challenge: Meet our illustrator

Children's book illustrator Shelley Knoll-Miller is the 2024 Premiers' Reading Challenge illustrator.

Shelley Knoll-Miller chose an imaginative world filled with fluttering insects for the posters and bookmarks for this year’s theme ‘Explore. Learn. Enjoy.’

“If you watch a butterfly flutter about, it’s a little like a story unfolding. You take the little trip with the butterfly,” she said.

“I chose the insect theme because I was thinking about how books are immersive and allow you to sort of flutter off and escape.

“I also wanted to create a world where kids really, truly needed books.

“Like a future world with no adults and lots and lots of different bugs that they had to learn about.”

Shelley says she draws all the time, everywhere — cafes, at home in front of the television, and in her car while her children play sport.

She says it’s important to realise that mistakes are a necessary part of drawing and that sometimes they can turn into fun ideas, even the best ideas.

Visit Shelley’s Instagram page to see more of her work.

Updated