David Elliot is an author and illustrator of children's books, based in Port Chalmers, Dunedin. As well as writing and illustrating his own books, David has illustrated numerous books by others, including UK writer Brian Jacques (author of the Redwall series). He has won many awards for his work, including New Zealand Post Children's Book of the Year in 2011 (with Margaret Mahy) for 'The Moon & Farmer McPhee'. 'Pigtails the Pirate' won Best Picture Book in the 2003 awards. In 2011 David received the inaugural Mallinson Rendel Illustrators Award, and in 2014 the Storylines Margaret Mahy Award.

"As an accompaniment comes Snark, a spoof-scholarly book by the author-illustrator David Elliott, weaving a new tale around "The Hunting of the Snark", conceived as a sea-stained journal kept by the boot boy on the voyage, discovered in a bicorne hat-box. Here are Bellman, Baker, Butcher, Beaver, Billiard-marker and Co, searching for the elusive creature that may also be a Boojum. The narrative is inventive and nonsensical enough, involving a spiral island, the Jabberwocky and a portmanteau monster that devours both ship and crew. Filled with steam-punk figures, toves, borrogroves and tsunamis, the free-wheeling, sometimes frenzied illustrations, in soft-pencil scribble-line overlaid with wet colour-washes, are energetically animated, with stylistic nods to Arthur Rackham, Edward Ardizzone and Dr Seuss, as well as to Tenniel. Then come thirty extra-illustrated pages of mock annotations, whimsically elucidating the Victorian allusions, amplifying but rather over-labouring the joke, itself testimony to the long life of Carroll’s comic imagination.” -- Times Literary Supplement, June 2017

August 14 2017 - Otago Author, David Elliot, wins Margaret Mahy Book of the Year - Winner of the 2017 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. “Rich imagery, with compelling storytelling. It draws readers into the tale of Lewis Carroll’s poetry like never before,” say the judges of the winner of this year’s Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award in the prestigious New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Snark also wins the Russell Clark Award for Illustration. Pam Jones, convenor of the judging panel, says, “Like Russell Clark, David Elliot has a clear wit that pervades his sketches. His draughtmanship is outstanding. However, it’s the cohesive way he has combined all elements of this book that won the judges over. David Elliot’s twist on Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poems is unique, and offers everything the reader could want – mystery, adventure and intrigue.”