Why did you start creating books for children?

I always wanted to be an artist, ever since I was a kid. I was always drawing in the margins of my school books. Eventually I did a graphic design course then got a job in advertising. I hated it! They didn’t like me much either – I was sacked for incompetence (hard to do a good job if you have zero interest in what you are doing). I started to do freelance illustration for some publishing companies, doing pictures for other people’s texts, then decided to have a go at writing a story myself. It was a poem called My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch. It was published in 1983 and I’ve been writing and illustrating my own books ever since.