I was born in Sydney, the eldest of three children. I loved to play, climb trees, ride my bike and swim. (I trained every morning and every afternoon.)
But what I loved most was reading, writing stories and drawing. My parents were terrific. They always gave me a pile of books at Christmas and plenty of pencils, paint and paper, and didn’t mind the mess.
When I finished high school I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I went to art school. There I met heaps of weird and wonderful people. A friend had a drum kit, so I got a guitar and we started a rock-and-roll band. I met my husband at a gig. He was a musician, and we played in bands together. We made silk-screen posters for our band.
Soon other bands asked us to make posters for them too, and we ended up forming a graphic arts company. My husband did the artwork, and I did the books…the account books.
We have three children. When they were babies we bought lots of picture books for them. The children loved being read to, and we enjoyed reading to them. I thought the pictures were beautiful and the stories exciting. I decided I wanted to write a picture book.
When my children were little they were scared of monsters. I remembered that when I was small I was scared of monsters too. It’s no good telling a child that they are silly to be afraid, that monsters don’t exist. If you have a strong imagination you can see, hear and even smell them! I thought very hard about this, and began to wonder… if children are so scared of monsters, are monsters scared of children, too? I decided that they must be and wrote Pog.
|
