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I was born in Sussex, England, in an oast house. We then moved to the Ashdown Forest (near where Pooh Bear lived). When I was ten, my family moved to Jakarta in Indonesia, where I went to an American school. When I was fifteen, we moved to New Zealand, where I finished high school and then went to art school in Auckland. I studied illustration but majored in graphic design, so I could get a steady job. I returned to England when I was twenty-four and worked in London as a designer for more than twenty years. In 2006 I decided to return to my passion and started illustrating and book writing, and I have not looked back since.
My two books were inspired by playing the game I Spy as a child, and then with my own three children on car journeys when they were growing up. The idea of eyes and holes came to me while in bed in the middle of the night. I got up and did a little sketch on a folded piece of paper, and tore a little hole . . . it worked!
I love the animal kingdom. There is so much variety: - wild and tame, big and small, on land, in the water, in the air, colorful, noisy . . . everything! And judging from the reactions to my books, I’m pretty sure kids really like animals too. The idea with the first I Spy was to go from the biggest animal in the world (the blue whale) to the smallest (it was going to be a fly) but that was a bit scary so we settled on the frog — who could have swallowed the fly!
I have lots more drawings of animals on my website, so check it out if you want to see a few more.
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