Just Ducks

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

Salvatore Rubbino

Salvatore Rubbino grew up near the old Arsenal Stadium in Highbury in North London, although he says this didn’t make him any better at football. He studied printmaking at art college where he discovered that you could think about drawing in lots of different ways. Later on at the Royal College of Art he studied illustration, and in 2005 was shortlisted for the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Awards for a series of paintings set in New York.

This series has been transformed into his first picture book, A Walk in New York (Walker Books), which charts the adventure of a walk through the Big Apple.  Salvatore was chosen for a BookTrust Best New Illustrators Award in 2011.