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sylviamorris.com.au
Sylvia Morris
@sylviamorris.com.au
51 followers 100 following 41 posts
sylvia.a.morris@gmail.com
www.sylviamorris.com.au

likes: maths, languages, sports, and detective stories.
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Sylvia Morris @sylviamorris.com.au · Oct 6
New books in 2025 ✨ From a hero dog to baby sharks to the southern night sky: telling science stories is the best!

Plus, news: I'm moving home to Adelaide next month and I absolutely cannot wait.

#kidlit #australianillustrator #nonfictionillustrator
Book cover for Bear to the Rescue. By Romane Cristescu and Nic Gill. Illustrated by Sylvia Morris. A dog wearing a coat and boots smiles out at us from a burned landscape. Two koalas look down from a tree. Book cover for The Great Shark Egg Case Hunt. By Kasey Whitelaw, illustrated by Sylvia Morris. The text is on blue waves. Four children, with varying skin and hair colours, pop out of the waves, each doing a different beach activity. Also popping out of the waves are some weird shaped objects: shark/skate/chimaera egg cases. Book cover for When the Stars Come Out. By Tanya Hill and Sylvia Morris. A young girl looks out her window at the twilit, starry sky. A torch to the side shines on her quilt, changing the pattern from moon and stars to suns. The curtains swish around her. She is wearing shorts and a t-shirt and has pale skin, freckles and curly brown hair.
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social
Brisbane Friends! Book launch party alert!🐨🐶📕🥳

Rom and I are beary excited to be launching "Bear to the Rescue" at the excellent Where The Wild Things Are Bookshop on December 3 from 4.30pm! 🐕🐨

Reserve a spot via the link👇 Hope to see you there! 📚🐕💕
wherethewildthingsare.com.au/pages/13509-...
Picture book cover of "Bear to the Rescue" by Romane Cristescu and Nic Gill, illustrated by Sylvia Morris. Text around it says "Bear to the Rescue Book Launch, Dec 3 4:30PM, with Dr Romane Cristescu, Nic Gill and Story Dogs. Illustrations feature a koala and some gum trees.
November 21, 2025 at 7:35 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
🥳 Bear Party! Wish I could be there it sounds like it's going to be the most fun book launch ever!
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social Nic Gill @tasbiophiliac.bsky.social · Oct 14
🚨We're officially launching “Bear to the Rescue” this Friday 17th October at 4:30pm, at Fullers Bookshop, Hobart!📕🥳

Expect all the usual tomfoolery – face-painting, costumes, animal fun times & themed snacks - as well as a special appearance from the Tasmanian Story Dogs. Hope to see you there! 🐨🐶
Bear To The Rescue | An Afternoon with Nic Gill
www.fullersbookshop.com.au
October 14, 2025 at 6:56 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
New books in 2025 ✨ From a hero dog to baby sharks to the southern night sky: telling science stories is the best!

Plus, news: I'm moving home to Adelaide next month and I absolutely cannot wait.

#kidlit #australianillustrator #nonfictionillustrator
Book cover for Bear to the Rescue. By Romane Cristescu and Nic Gill. Illustrated by Sylvia Morris. A dog wearing a coat and boots smiles out at us from a burned landscape. Two koalas look down from a tree. Book cover for The Great Shark Egg Case Hunt. By Kasey Whitelaw, illustrated by Sylvia Morris. The text is on blue waves. Four children, with varying skin and hair colours, pop out of the waves, each doing a different beach activity. Also popping out of the waves are some weird shaped objects: shark/skate/chimaera egg cases. Book cover for When the Stars Come Out. By Tanya Hill and Sylvia Morris. A young girl looks out her window at the twilit, starry sky. A torch to the side shines on her quilt, changing the pattern from moon and stars to suns. The curtains swish around her. She is wearing shorts and a t-shirt and has pale skin, freckles and curly brown hair.
October 6, 2025 at 4:22 PM
sylviamorris.com.au
Quote with your night art!

#kidlit #digitalart #illustration
(from When the Stars Come Out)
Digital illustration, soft blue and purple hues: A family stops in the gap between two townhouses to point and look up at a white spot, moving across the sky. In the centre, one member of the family, a young girl, looks down instead, into the light of a torch she's shining directly into her own face.
October 6, 2025 at 4:10 PM
sylviamorris.com.au
Yay @tasbiophiliac.bsky.social for finding Bear!
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social Nic Gill @tasbiophiliac.bsky.social · Sep 25
Eeep! Today, I had my first, entirely unexpected sighting of “Bear to the Rescue”in the wild! 🐨 🐶 📕

I didn’t expect to see them out so soon, so got completely over-excited and made Sophie and Tim pose holding them. Unbelievably, they are available in store at Fullers Bookshop RIGHT NOW! 🐨🐶📚
A stack of beautiful kids picture books, including my book, "Bear to the Rescue" Bookseller Sophie holding a copy of "Bear to the Rescue" inside a bookshop. She is smiling and has pink hair. Tim, a tall, blond bookseller with glasses, holds an open copy of "Bear to the Rescue" Multiple open copies of the book "Bear to the Rescue", which have been signed by one of the authors, Nic Gill
September 25, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
brianlarossa.com
Hey #kidlit illustrators!

We're beginning work on new Christmas/nighttime themed picture book. I'm looking for someone with a painterly, textured, and literary style capable conjuring magic, light, and wonder.

Please respond w/ samples + folio link.
Please no emails/DMs.

💙❤️ #artcommissions
September 15, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social
BEAR TO THE RESCUE has landed! 🐨🐶📙

Stoked to get our paws on our first copies of the new book! Got the dogs to help with unboxing - mixed results.

Gromit was politely interested. Morello tried to eat the packaging, and fell off the bench. But Zorro is an old hand, and showed them how it's done!
Border collie wearing an inflatable collar, looking serious near an unopened box. Book in a box, cover up: "Bear to the Rescue" by Romane Critescu, Nic Gill, Illustrated by Sylvia Morris. Small black and white border collie with orange lead sits on bench next to opened box of books, eating a piece of non-toxic packaging material Black and white sprollie licks his lips over open box of books.
September 12, 2025 at 2:32 AM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tanaudel.bsky.social
t-e-x-t-u-r-e
But look at the lines between the bricks — where they're dark and where mid-tone, and where they are the brightest thing in the image.
Look for colours in the bricks: find the spectrum. Which colours make it glow and dance and approach self-effacingly...

#artthoughts
fpiatti.bsky.social 𝖋𝖊𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖈𝖔 𝖕𝖎𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖎 @fpiatti.bsky.social · Aug 25
Detail wip. All these stones are doing me in, send halp 😅
#illustration #rebelle8
September 11, 2025 at 11:48 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
qrp with something watery! 🌊

Couldn't turn down a perfect opportunity to share a collage from The Great Shark Egg Case Hunt - out in October 🦈🪸
A photo of a watercolour collage: Bright orange coral against a turquoise background. A patterned shark tail swishes away from an egg case tangled up in the coral. Book cover text: The Great Shark Egg Case Hunt. Kasey Whitelaw. Illustrated by Sylvia Morris. Four kids, all engaged in different ocean activities, feature on the cover. There are also several different egg cases.
September 11, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social
🌳🐨🌳 I'm never sure if we should say "Happy" for this particular annual event, but something we can be happy about this Threatened Species Day is that the NSW Government just announced a huge new park - the Great Koala National Park! 🌳🐨🌳

Read all about it here: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Cover for a book entitled "Bear to the Rescue" illustrated in a cheerful cartoony style, with a grey and white dog in a working jacket and boots saying "Happy Threatened Species Day", standing under a burnt out tree with a koala and her joey sitting above him looking down.
September 7, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social
Good news for Threatened Species Day! A great big new park! 🌳🐨 🌳

Also nice to see that significant commitments have been made to support the people in the region who have relied on forestry for jobs until now — no real progress without supporting local communities 🐨 🌳💚🧍‍♂️
September 7, 2025 at 9:52 PM
sylviamorris.com.au
🐶🐾
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social Nic Gill @tasbiophiliac.bsky.social · Aug 26
Book giveaway to celebrate International Dog Day! 🐶📕🐕📚🐩

Show and tell me why your dog is the best dog*, and I’ll send whoever writes my favourite dog story a copy our new book, “Bear to the Rescue”, signed by Rom, Syl, Bear and I! 🐨🐶📕

Dog love stories: ready, set, GO!
Book cover for a picture book entitled"Bear to the Rescue" by Romane Cristescu, Nic Gill and Sylvia Morris, showing a grey and white dog in a blue working jacket, red protective boots, standing beneath a charred tree which shelters a mother koala and her joey. Dog speech bubble says "Happy International Dog Day!". Black and white border collie nose boops the face of a woman in an orange high-vis shirt, safety helmet and sunglasses.
August 26, 2025 at 5:04 AM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tanaudel.bsky.social
A real party night out in the CBD is when you return to the house with more books than you left with
August 22, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tanaudel.bsky.social
Drawing is like:
tanaudel.bsky.social Kathleen Jennings @tanaudel.bsky.social · Aug 5
Frogs: what are they?
August 5, 2025 at 7:59 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
Here, I was imagining my absolute dream project (a fully illustrated SFF poetry collection for middle grade) and adapted this Spitzweg painting to test out some techniques. #kidlitart #australianillustrator #carlspitzweg
A peaceful forest scene. A huge, big-eyed dragonfly with intricate wings is flying in the foreground, with another following behind. In a little patch of sunlight, a girl is standing watching them. She's carrying bags and a big stick, like an explorer. Some paragraphs of text are blurred out, and there's a vertical line down the centre of the image. Carl Sptizweg's: Der Schmetterlingjäger (The Butterfly Hunter). Two large butterflies in the foreground of a jungle scene. A man with a (far too small) butterfly net, watches on in shock. He, too, is carrying lots of bags. The overall composition is similar, but this is in portrait, where the previous was landscape.
August 4, 2025 at 6:31 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
This is a little series I made for Folktale Week in 2022. I still love it, so now it can live here. #folktaleweek #shortstories
A greyscale splotchy watercolour background. Neatly, formally handwritten i white over the top: The Troubled Kingdom, a portrait.
August 1, 2025 at 5:17 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
QRP with your skull art!
A dark grey, textured background is flecked with spats of white. A watercolour skeleton walks cautiously out of the nothingness.
August 1, 2025 at 5:13 AM
Reposted by Sylvia Morris
tasbiophiliac.bsky.social
🚨Arooga arooga! 🚨

Excited to share the cover of my very first picture book: "Bear to the Rescue"! 🐨🐶📘🔥

Co-written with Romane Cristescu, and illustrated bySylvia Morris, our book tells the true story of Bear as he goes from being a bit "too much" to saving koalas after the 2020 mega fires 🔥
Book cover for a book called "Bear to the Rescue" by Romane Cristescu and Nic Gill, Illustrated by Sylvia Morris. Book cover shows watercolour image of a smiling, blue-eyed, grey and white dog wearing a blue jacket and black and red protective boots, standing in front of a burnt out etree with a koala and her joey sheltering in the uppermost branches. The background air is a pinkish colour, and there are dead yellow leaves scattered on the ground, but the overall impression is one of hope.
July 31, 2025 at 2:16 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
Ķemeri National Park: along a boardwalk that stretches out forever, past infinitely deep lakes under a changeable sky. #kidlitillustration #kemerunacionalaisparks #australianillustrator
A watercolour and coloured pencil illustration: A friendly, stylised grey heron flies over a green and orangey landscape, scattered with trees and small lakes. It is flying from right to left, from stormy skies to blue skies. A boardwalk threads through the scene, and a girl on the boardwalk looks up at the heron. We are looking down on the scene, and the perspective warps the horizon into a curve, suggesting the landscape is stretching out forever. Hand painted text: Ķemeru nacionālais parks.
July 23, 2025 at 11:15 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
It's time to think about Book Week outfits! If anyone dresses as Lily from When the Stars Come Out, I would LOVE to see your photos. #cbcabookweek2025 #auskidlit
A cropped out photo of myself, dressed up as Lily from When the Stars Come Out, on a twilight sky watercolour background. Annotations: Blue hair clip, orange/yellow top, denim shorts (jeans/leggings for cold weather), torch.
July 22, 2025 at 10:44 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
Happy Friday from a happy baby! Not the direction I intended for this picture at all, but what is a Friday for, if not for a little play? #kidlit
A watercolour painting of a baby being swept up in their mother's arms and laughing.
July 18, 2025 at 11:15 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
Happy #KidLitArtPostcard day! I'm an Australian illustrator who'd love to work on some fun junior fiction books :) See my PBs and more work here: sylviamorris.com.au
A hand-drawn, pencil and watercolour illustration of girls playing Australian Rules football. Two vignettes of the one character, kicking and chasing the ball. One of another character marking the ball. There is also a vignette of an ibis searching through a school bag. Text: SYLVIA MORRIS, sylvia.a.morris@gmail.com, www.sylviamorris.com.au
July 3, 2025 at 9:30 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
While I have not done as much landscape painting/drawing in Europe as I expected, I do now have a huge backlog of photos to work from whenever I want! This is Ķemeri National Park in Latvia.
A watercolour and coloured pencil illustrated landscape from a high viewpoint. A pale boardwalk curves through a flat green landscape, scattered with trees and lakes. The sky is cloudy.
July 2, 2025 at 7:39 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
YAY! When The Stars Come Out has been shortlisted in the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards! Congrats to Tanya Hill and the #MuseumsVictoria team! And to all the other shortlistees - it's esp fun to be on any list with Lucia Masciullo and Jess Racklyeft <3 #SPABookOfTheYear
Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards 2025, 5-8 years. There are ten books listed, including When the Stars Come Out, by Tanya Hill and Sylvia Morris.
July 1, 2025 at 9:01 AM
sylviamorris.com.au
After failing to visit the Swiss Alps for the first time in 2020 (because of the obvious reason) and then for the second time in 2023 (because my passport was stolen as I passed through Frankfurt train station), I finally managed to make it! And it was as beautiful as I dreamed, plus more.
A photo with wildflowers in foreground, against dark pines, and behind those, in the distance, are snow-capped mountains.
July 1, 2025 at 5:06 AM