A First Book of Animals

Nicola Davies

Nicola Davies is the author of more than 50 books for children: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in more than 10 different languages and has won major awards in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany.

Nicola trained as a zoologist, taking a degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge. She spent some years as a field biologist and studied humpback and sperm whales, and bats, before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher and then presenter.

Following the start of her writing career, Nicola became a senior lecturer in creative writing, at Bath Spa University but has been writing full time for over a decade. She now regularly runs workshops for children and adults to help them find their voices as writers and advocates for nature. In 2017, she was the first recipient of the SLA’s award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Non-fiction and in 2018 had four picture books longlisted for the Greenaway Award.

Find out what Nicola Davies is up to as our Writer in Residence

Petr Horacek

I grew up in Prague in the Czech Republic. Just outside our flat there was a wood where I spent lots of time playing with friends. We would climb on piles of soil or build bunkers from forgotten builder's materials. I always wanted to be an illustrator, but I preferred to look at the pictures inside the books rather than to read them. I would listen to the story or watch a film and then fill up my sketchbook with pictures and images from the story. I started to read books quite late, but I haven't stopped since.