Sleepy Places

My favourite things were reading, pretending, and climbing trees. I frequently combined them by reading my book while up a tree. I loved putting on plays with friends and making secret camps and tree houses. I went to university in a big city, far from home, which was very exciting. I married an Englishman (I was born in America), and had two children, John and Anna, who are my great friends. I was very happy when I started working on children's books because although it can be very hard work, sometimes it's just like making things up - except that you get something real in the end.

I was born in London, but a South African mother meant frequent trips there when I was little, and memories of holidays with my grandparents next to the sea are some of my most powerful and influential. Leaving secondary school, I knew I wanted to study art, but hadn't really registered that illustration might be a degree all by itself. Finding that it was, I went to Kingston, and meeting a class of twenty other people interested in the same things as me was sort of a revelation - here were more people who'd drawn fairies in their teens, liked to talk about types of pencil and thought Maurice Sendak was wonderful.