Catherine Rayner

Award-winning author and illustrator Catherine Rayner grew up in the countryside of West Yorkshire. She has drawn animals ever since she could hold a pencil and her first pictures usually featured their family dog, a very naughty miniature dachshund called Wilfred. Catherine's love of drawing never faded and after school she moved up to Scotland to study Illustration at Edinburgh College of Art. She fell in love with the city and still lives there with her husband, two young sons and a handful of creatures including Shannon the horse, Ena the grey cat and two goldfish called Richard and Louise.

She continues to finds huge inspiration in her pets and often uses them as models, frequently asking Ena to pose so that she can study her posture and movement. Then she translates sketches of Ena into characters such as dragons, hares, moose and bears! But it was creatures of a wilder kind that inspired her first picture book Augustus and His Smile, spending hours watching and sketching tigers at Edinburgh Zoo. The success of her first book has lead on to Catherine writing a further 15 books to date and illustrating stories for many other well known authors.