Winnie and Wilbur at Chinese New Year

About Valerie Thomas

Valerie Thomas was born in Melbourne, Australia, and has lived there for most of her life, apart from six years spent in Europe, where she worked in England, France and Norway. She is a teacher, and has taught in primary, secondary, and special schools in Australia and England as well as lecturing in English Teaching Method in a Teachers’ College in Melbourne.

For many years she worked as an educational researcher and curriculum consultant in the area of spelling, and has written extensively on the subject. Her other main interest is travel. She has travelled to most corners of the world, and has written about her travels: the first piece of writing she had published was an account of her experience picking grapes for the champagne harvest in France.

In 1987 her phenomenally successful children’s book Winnie the Witch, illustrated by Korky Paul, was published by Oxford University Press and won the Children’s Book of the Year Award. It has since been translated into many languages around the world and become a children's classic.