I have been creating books for the under fives for nearly 30 years and have been fortunate in that many of them are still in print and selling well.

My best known book, Dear Zoo, was one of my first and has been a success from the moment it came out in 1982. This was a time when so-called novelty books were in their infancy. Eric Hill’s Spot had just introduced the wonderful lift-the-flap concept for pre-readers - anything that attracts them to books is a good thing. As I toyed with the interactive activity (as it is called nowadays) possibilities, the idea for Dear Zoo came to me almost fully formed – something that has never happened since.

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