Bio

Watch a video interview with Nic Bishop.  

Nic Bishop is the acclaimed photographer and author of more than sixty books for children, including Red-Eyed Tree Frog (written by Joy Cowley) and the much-lauded Nic Bishop Animals series. He is a three-time recipient of the American Library Association’s Robert F. Sibert Honor Award for Nic Bishop Spiders, Quest for the Tree Kangaroo (written by Sy Montgomery), and The Tarantula Scientist (written by Sy Montgomery). He has also received the Orbis Pictus Award, two Orbis Pictus Honor Awards, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, among numerous others.

Nic was born in England and raised in Bangladesh, Sudan, and Papua New Guinea. He graduated with honors in biology from Nottingham University, England, and then traveled across Europe, Asia, and Australia, to New Zealand, where he completed a PhD at Canterbury University. Nic has been likened to a David Attenborough for kids, and he has the adventurous spirit of an Indiana Jones. His work as a photographer has taken him to the farthest corners of the planet. He has trekked into the remote cloud forests of New Guinea, dodged ice avalanches in New Zealand, and crossed the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. He has also had many adventures and amusing animal encounters at home, where his guest bedroom often accommodates tarantulas, snakes, and chameleons. Once he built a rainforest pond indoors to photograph basilisk lizards running on water.

Nic began his publishing career by writing and photographing natural history books for adults. “But it became evident that young readers liked some of my photographs,” says Nic, “especially my close-up pictures of animals like frogs, insects, and spiders. I had never considered writing children’s books, but my publisher explained how some children do not respond well to fiction books and without access to good nonfiction their reading can languish. This rang true with me. I remembered being given fiction books in my early school years that I simply had no interest in reading. As a result my interest in reading suffered until my teenage years, when I discovered nonfiction.”

Nic switched from adult to children’s books and has not looked back. “They are just so much more fun to create than adult books,” he says.

Nic Bishop lives with his wife in Michigan. Visit him online at www.nicbishop.com.