Amazing MR Zooty!

The Amazing Mr Zooty is always on the lookout for people to help. So when he meets the kind but poor Taylor family he decides to grant them each a wish. What would be best — pancakes for breakfast, a purse always full of change, or…just what was it that Lucy wished for? A ride in a balloon? A voyage downstream. Or was it the garden with a kitten in it?

Emma Chichester Clark was born in London but lived in Ireland until 1975. She studied at the Chelsea School of Art from 1975 to 1978, followed by a course at the Royal College of Art from 1980 to 1983 where she was taught by Quentin Blake. She has worked as a freelance illustrator for various magazines including New Scientist, Cosmopolitan, and The Sunday Times and has also illustrated numerous book jackets. Her work was exhibited at the Thumb Gallery in 1984 and 1987. Emma lives in West London.

Emma won the Mother Goose Award in 1988 as the most exciting newcomer to children’s book illustration for Listen to This, a collection of short stories compiled by Laura Cecil, her agent. This received wide critical acclaim when it was first published by The Bodley Head in 1988. Her first picture book for The Bodley Head, Catch That Hat! was published in 1988, followed by The Story of Horrible Hilda and Henry in the same year.