Blue Kangaroo is one of the most infectiously delightful characters to share with your toddler. Both girls and boys will find this one very appealing as it covers the issue of colour. Lily’s ‘all-pink’ birthday doesn’t go down well with Blue Kangaroo until Lily sees quite unhappy he is and she changes her pink outfit to a blue one in order to regain her friendship.
The words and the illustrations complement each other so well in this warm and funny story that children will want to read and re-read time and time again. Blue Kangaroo events will be held at The Cheltenham Book Festival in October. For more details click here.
Lily and Blue Kangaroo share everything, even birthdays. And for her next one, Lily has decided that everything must be pink: pink invitations, pink party clothes, pink wrapping paper. Even Blue Kangaroo gets a pink ribbon to wear. He isn't sure that he likes it, and thinks that Lily would prefer him if he were pink.
Emma Chichester Clark studied at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, 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.
In 1988 she won the Mother Goose Award for her first book, Listen to This!, an anthology compiled by Laura Cecil. She also won the Kate Greenaway medal in 1988. Since then, she has become internationally known, illustrating writers such as Roald Dahl, Peter Dickinson, Anne Fine and Margaret Mahy. Emma was the first winner of the newly created Grinzane Junior Award for I Love you, Blue Kangaroo.
Emma was born in London but raised in Ireland. She started drawing "just about as soon as I could hold a pencil. But I could never find enough paper and my mother wouldn't let me use her Basildon Bond. So secretly I used to tear the blank pages out of her grown-up books and draw on them and make my own little books."
