Poles Apart
Jeanne Willis (Author)
Jeanne Willis wrote her first book when she was five - a slim volume about cats written in pencil and stitched together with a painfully blunt needle so that it looked like a 'real' book. After that, there was no turning back. Having been fired from her Saturday job - selling cowboy boots on the Kings Road - for chewing gum, and after a brief career as a reptile vet's assistant, she worked as a copywriter and had her first picture book published at the age of 21 (which she wrote whilst pretending to be busy creating adverts for cognac).
She has since written over 300 books and has won several awards, which are arranged in the attic where she works, along with her collection of caterpillars, pink-toed tarantula skins and live locusts. Jeanne has a keen interest in Natural History and has lost count of the number of species featured in her books, including everything from slugs to sloths. She is currently into corvids - especially Nosy Crows.
Jarvis (Illustrator)
Jarvis is the illustrator of Poles Apart and I'm In Charge. He did lots of different jobs before creating his first children's book, including work as a bingo caller, a bouncy-castle painter, a record-sleeve designer and an animation director. He's always doodled characters, and thinks that everything he's done in the past has helped make him a better children's picture book illustrator and writer...Maybe not the bingo calling...
Jarvis wants the books he creates to be very personal, and particularly loves the nature of children's books, what they can do and how they can be kept and loved as little treasures.