Award winning author and illustrator Catherine Rayner studied Illustration at Edinburgh College of art. She fell in love with the city and still lives there with her husband, young son, and a handful of creatures: Shannon the horse, Ena the grey cat and a goldfish called Richard.
She 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 and hares, not to mention moose and bears! But it was creatures of a wilder kind that inspired her first picture book, Augustus, and His Smile – Catherine spent hours and hours watching and sketching tigers (in freezing temperatures) at Edinburgh Zoo.
Books in order of publication:
Writer and illustrator
Augustus and his Smile, Little Tiger Press, 2006
Harris Finds his Feet, Little Tiger Press, 2008
Sylvia and Bird, Little Tiger Press, 2009
Ernest, Macmillan Children’s Books, 2009
Norris, The Bear who Shared, Orchard Books, 2010
Iris and Isaac, Little Tiger Press, 2010
Solomon Crocodile, Macmillan Children’s Books, 2011
Abigail, Little Tiger Press, 2013
Smelly Louie, Macmillan Children’s Books, 2014
Solomon and Mortimer, Macmillan Children’s Books 2016
Illustrator
Posy, written by Linda Newberry, Orchard Books, 2008
The Tales of Olga Da Polga, written by Michael Bond, Oxford University Press, 2011
Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat, written by Ursula Moray Williams, Macmillan, 2012
Tiger Tale, written by Holly Webb, Scholastic, 2014
Clare and her Captain, written by Michael Morpurgo, published 2015
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