Writer

After art college, I got a job as a medical illustrator, and I was pretty good. I had to imagine what was going on in the operations because the photographs just showed a mess.

I grew up in Yorkshire, and once or twice a year, we'd travel over the Pennines to see my cousins in Cheshire.

Gorillas remind me of my father. He was a very big, physically strong man but also very sensitive.

Many adults that I have met in my time believed that picture books are 'babyish'. I hope I have changed minds on this, as I set out to do.

Worrying can be a kind of caring, and as such is a healthy part of a balanced emotional life.

A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.

When I talk to children, I show them a typical drawing I made when I was six and point out to them that when I was their age, I didn't draw any better than any of them.

The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.