StoryPlay Books

Mark Teague is an award-winning children’s book author and illustrator whose books include the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling How Do Dinosaurs… series, the LaRue series, FIREHOUSE!, FUNNY FARM, and many other humorous picture books. Mark lives in New York state with his wife and their two daughters.

Tony Mitton has been reading and writing since he was 9. He began writing specifically for children around the age of 40 while still working as a primary school and special needs teacher. He now works full-time as a writer and sometimes performs his poems in schools and libraries and occasionally at other venues, mainly in the UK. His main published work consists of solo collections of lyric and narrative poetry, and verse picture books illustrated by a range of illustrators. His picture books include Down by the Cool of the Pool (with Guy Parker-Rees) and The Somethingosaur (with Russell Ayto). He was recently contracted to rewrite the English verse texts for Dick Bruna’s Miffy series of preschool books.

I was born and grew up in a small town called Weymouth, on the south coast of England. My family was from Wales, and I inherited from them a love of stories. As a child, I spent most of my time either reading or writing. From an early age I started making books (and even a monthly magazine for witches) with my own stories and pictures in them. I took this very seriously, and was quite determined that I would be an author when I grew up. All I needed to keep me happy was a pile of books to read (I was a regular visitor to our local library), some blank paper, a pencil and some felt tip pens that hadn’t run out. In the end, I didn’t become an author – at least, not straight away. I went to Newcastle University in the north of England to study French and Spanish, and in between being a student there I spent time in France, Spain and Cuba, where I learned to dance salsa and once queued for 4 hours for an ice-cream. After graduating, I trained as a secondary school teacher and headed out to Mexico City with an open ticket and no job. Luckily, I found a job teaching French in an International school, and I ended up staying in Mexico for four years, before returning to the UK to do a Masters in Film and Television Production at Bristol University. After a lot of fun helping young people in Bristol make films (but not making much money), I returned to teaching for a few years, working with refugees and asylum seekers and then teaching Spanish at the University of the West of England. During this time, I met Thomas Docherty, who had recently started illustrating his own books. It was Tom who encouraged me to start writing stories again, and we co-wrote the book Ruby Nettleship and the Ice Lolly Adventure (Templar, 2010). In the summer of 2011 I wrote my first ever rhyming story, The Snatchabook (Alison Green Books, 2013). Tom and I got married in 2008 and we now live in Swansea, Wales, with our two daughters and a cat called Cadi. Looking back, I’m glad that I ended up learning languages, living abroad and working for many years as a teacher… before I finally became an author! Nowadays, I love going into schools to tell my stories to children and inspire them to write stories of their own. Working with Thomas Docherty through Storyopolis, I’ve helped lots of children in Swansea create their very own Book in a Day. You can read some of their fantastic stories by following this link to my Storyopolis page. (Bio via helendocherty.com)

Michael Emberley is perhaps best known as the illustrator of Robie H. Harris’s books on human sexuality: It’s Perfectly Normal, It’s So Amazing, and It’s Not the Stork (Candlewick). His father Ed Emberley also makes children’s books. Michael lives in Ireland.

Ali Pye has wanted to be an illustrator since she was little, when she drew stories and stuck the pages together to make her own books. But it took her a few years and a stint as a copyeditor before she started drawing professionally in 2010. She is the illustrator of Mouse’s First Night at Moonlight School by Simon Puttock as well as other stories. This is the first book that she’s both written and illustrated. She lives in London.