Happy Birthday, Blue Kangaroo!

About Emma Chichester Clark

Emma Chichester Clark studied at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where she was taught by Quentin Blake. She has worked as a freelance illustrator for various magazines including New Scientist, Cosmopolitan and The Sunday Times, for publishers and advertising agencies as well as teaching art for several years, and has also illustrated numerous book jackets. 

In 1988 she won the Mother Goose Award for her first book, Listen to This!, an anthology compiled by Laura Cecil. She also won the Kate Greenaway medal in 1988. Since then, she has become internationally known, illustrating writers such as Roald Dahl, Peter Dickinson, Anne Fine and Margaret Mahy. Emma was the first winner of the newly created Grinzane Junior Award for I Love you, Blue Kangaroo.

Emma was born in London but raised in Ireland. She started drawing "just about as soon as I could hold a pencil. But I could never find enough paper and my mother wouldn't let me use her Basildon Bond. So secretly I used to tear the blank pages out of her grown-up books and draw on them and make my own little books."