Graeme Base
Viking (Penguin) 2003

The inhabitants of Hubcap, an outback town, are part machine and part animal, mostly dog. Sparky and the Mongrel Pack drive the rest of the citizens of Hubcap crazy as they hoon around town, squealing their wheels and causing trouble. They are thrown out into the desert to fend for themselves but all is forgiven when they rescue the town from the petrol-thieving Mr Big and his RottWheelers.

About the author

Graeme Base is a successful Australian author and artist of picture books that have been sold internationally. He is perhaps best known for his second book, Animalia, published in 1986, and his third The Eleventh Hour which was released in 1989.

He was born in England but moved to Australia with his family at the age of eight and has lived there ever since. He attended Box Hill and Melbourne High Schools and studied graphic design at Swinburne University of Technology. He worked in advertising for two years and then began illustrating children’s books, gradually moving to authoring them as well.

Graeme resides in Melbourne with his wife Robyn and three children. Graeme's first novel for young readers, Truckdogs, was published in 2003. It was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year: Younger Readers Award in 2004.

The Penguin web site has information about Truckdogs

The Wikopedia entry for Graeme Base can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Base

Another web site with information about Graeme is:http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/base.htm

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