RNZ Launches Audio-Visual Children’s Content

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________





What Are You Supposed to Be?
RNZ Launches Audio-Visual Children’s Content
In a first-ever three-way creative collaboration with a major publisher, and an international children’s author and illustrator, RNZ’s Treasure Chest enters the amazing world of animated books for children with an absolutely irresistible moving book.

What Are You Supposed to Be? - created by storyteller and animator Paul Beavis - is the first animated video to be available through RNZ’s online Treasure Chest for children.

RNZ Drama producer, Adam Macaulay, says he spotted What Are You Supposed to Be? among a collection of books from Scholastic publishers being considered for audio production by the RNZ Treasure Chest.

"The illustrations are absolutely brilliant," he said, "But they are so much a part of the story the book just won’t work without them. We were about to return What Are You Supposed to Be? to Scholastic but I decided to contact them just to explain -- and to tell them how much I really loved the book anyway."

That apologetic call started the ball rolling towards a three-way creative collaboration and the result is an animated version – a moving book - of What Are You Supposed to Be? using the original illustrations.

"It’s so important we don’t lose sight of the books themselves and that they are products of some astonishing creative minds," says Macaulay, "It’s about celebrating the writing and the telling of stories – and about illustration as part of how we tell stories. Whatever gets kids hooked into reading books and writing and telling – that’s what this project is about."

Writer and illustrator Paul Beavis was born in London and studied Graphic Design at Central St. Martins School of Art during the early nineties. After graduation he worked in children's animation, making shows for the BBC and Channel 4, before moving into some commercial animation work and dabbling in children’s story book illustration. He moved to Wellington in 2012 and now is established as a major writer and illustrator of books with Scholastic New Zealand.

What Are You Supposed to Be? is the first of a series of animated children’s stories being developed by RNZ for the Treasure Chest collection.

What Are You Supposed to Be? can be viewed here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/collections/storytime-treasure-chest/what-are-you-supposed-to-be-by-paul-beavis



For further information about the moving books project and the Treasure Chest - or to arrange an interview - please contact:



Adam Macaulay - RNZ Commissioning Editor 021 149 3522
adam.Macaulay@radionz.co.nz