Matthews, Tina 1961–

Personal

Born 1961, in Wellington, New Zealand; married; has children.

Addresses

Home and office—Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Career

Artist and author of children's books. Formerly worked as a puppetmaker, bass player, teacher, and designer.

Writings

Out of the Egg, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2007.

Sidelights

Tina Matthews was born in New Zealand, and has worked as a puppet maker, musician, designer, and teacher. Now making her home in Australia, she published her first self-illustrated picture book, Out of the Egg, in 2007. Released in both Australia and the United States, Out of the Egg takes as its starting point the well-known story about the Little Red Hen, who worked and worked to prepare and grow her garden while all her friends avoided helping until it came time to share the garden's bounty. In Matthews' version, the hard-working gardener takes time out to lay a beautiful white egg and the chick that hatches takes a different approach to life than its mother. Matthews also created intricate, dramatically colored, woodcut illustrations to enhance her amusing tale, resulting in a picture book that "offers unusual visual impact," according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Noting that the story's theme might be more obvious to parents than to children, Horn Book contributor Roger Sutton nonetheless deemed Matthews' environmentally based text "spare and sprightly." Calling Out of the Egg a "gritty, sharply graphic woodcut version of [a] … time-honored tale," Kathy Krasniewics concluded in School Library Journal that Matthews' art illustrates the interconnection of "city and country, … environmentalism and careless consumerism, and … egotism and the greater good."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Horn Book, May-June, 2007, Roger Sutton, review of Out of the Egg, p. 269.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2007, review of Out of the Egg, p. 77.

School Library Journal, March, 2007, Kathy Krasniewics, review of Out of the Egg, p. 180.

ONLINE

Houghton Mifflin Web site,http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/ (July 15, 2008), "Tina Matthews."