Ed Vere

Veew is the 2020 Illustrator in Residence for Booktrust. While there he Will Champion drawing in primary education and attempt to start a national conversation about the benefits of drawing for mental health.

At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Vere started creating step-by-step ‘how to draw’ videos for a home-schooling audience. These videos are free to use and available on his website.

Vere travelled to Kenya in early 2019 to explore, paint and write about Born Free’s work. Writing about and painting lions, their natural habitats and the local populations they live alongside. Discovering the work Born Free does to ensure that the world's remaining 20000 wild lions have a secure and sustainable future. Ed and Born Free will be publishing a book in 2022. There will also be an exhibition and fund-raising auction.

Ed Vere is a British writer and illustrator of children's books. He won the Highland Children's Book Award in 2007 for his book, The Getaway and was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal for children's book illustration, recognizing his 2008 picture book Banana. His third book, Mr. Big was chosen by Booktrust as the official Booktime book for 2009 and was subsequently distributed to 750,000 British schoolchildren making it the largest single print run of a picture book in the UK. In 2009, his fourth book, Chick won the Booktrust Early Years Award for Best Baby Book. His book Bedtime for Monsters was shortlisted for the 2011 Roald Dahl Funny Prize. His 2018 book,How to Be a Lion, was nominated for the 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal and the 2019 Carnegie Medal.