Jon Klassen​ became an internationally famous children's book writer and illustrator by a "process of elimination" rather than career design.

The Los Angeles-based celebrity of the primary school set first tried high-action animation but didn't quite have the talent.

"I was impatient about it, and it turned out I didn't like it," Klassen says, in  Australia for the  Sydney Writers' Festival and an appearance at Melbourne's Wheeler Centre.

"And it turns out you can be great at drawing and be a terrible animator, or not be good at drawing and a beautiful animator; it's a totally different skill set."

Playing to his strengths, Klassen worked on the background set for Disney's Kung Fu Panda 2. For the dark fantasy adaption of the Neil Gaiman novella, Coraline, Klassen helped create the interiors of the Pink Palace Apartments, the dog chorus and the crazy mouse circus.

When he eventually quit the studios to create his first solo picture book, Klassen's affection for inanimate objects turned into a deceptively simple, winning style.

In 2011 Klassen's I Want My Hat Back became a runaway bestseller, and took off as an internet meme featuring Dr Who, Mr T, and Finn from Adventure Time. With his sequel This is Not My Hat, Klassen became the first children's book illustrator to win the equally prestigious American Caldecott Medal and the British Kate Greenaway Medal for the same book.

I Want My Hat Back features an expressionless brown bear whom Klassen first drew as a greeting card.

The bear quizzes his fellow forest animals - a frog, turtle, snake and a rabbit – in search of a missing hat. Eventually he discovers the rabbit's lie and eats him off-the-page in revenge.

"It's a crime of passion rather than a crime of necessity," says Klassen.

The ending was controversial, however. Some publishers he had shopped the book to wanted it changed to something less final.

"I'm not an especially antagonistic writer," says Klassen, who grew up in Winnipeg, Canada. "I don't like to make controversy for the sake of it. For me it was the cleanest way to get rid of the rabbit, it was like everything he deserved.

"That book was written very quickly, in the space of 20 minutes. It made sense to eat him. What else could you possibly do? He's a bear and it's a rabbit. The editors said, 'Well, can't he just beat him up?' I said, 'Well that's worst, isn't it?"'

Part of the books' appeal lies in the stark contrast between the bear's impeccable manners, his stiff pose, the lies spun in the dialogue and the bear's eyes, which dart about nervously.

Both children and adults recognise the very human emotions of covering up misdeeds with fibs, says the author who popped his awards in a draw while he worked on his third book, We Found a Hat, to be released in October.

"You have to be careful because [recognition] can mess you up I think," he says. "You can own it too hard and think you understood what was going on, and you don't really. You can do interviews and you can talk deliberately about these things you did in the book but really you were intuiting and feeling your way in the dark. You can't take it in the room with you when you make another book."

Jon Klassen will host a storytelling workshop at Melbourne's Wheeler Centre on Sunday, May 22.

wheelercentre.com/

In Sydney Klassen will speak on children's book design Saturday 1.30pm at Sydney Writers' Festival.

The Sydney Writers' Festival will turn over Wharf 4/5 to children and teens all day Sunday for an event of books, music, craft and art called Glowtopia.