Jonathan Emmett was born in Leicestershire in 1965, the son of a rig-fitter and a primary school teacher. It was while Jonathan was at college studying architecture, that he first began to develop his skills as a writer and illustrator. As an architect, Jonathan worked on a wide variety of projects including an art gallery, a theatre and an airport check-in building. However he was never very happy in the job and was always saying that he didn’t want to be doing it in ten years time. After a few years in architecture, he switched careers, and he is now a full-time writer and paper-engineer. Three months after leaving a career in architecture, Jonathan signed up with a literary agent and a couple “of months later he sold his first pop-up book Scraposaurus Wrecks”. However, although he completed the book, it was never published. This was a big disappointment, but the fact that he had sold the story, and been commissioned to illustrate and paper-engineer it, gave him the confidence to continue working on children’s books and he subsequently succeeded in getting into print. In addition to writing chapter fiction and picture books such as “No Place Like Home”, “Bringing Down the Moon” and “Diamond in the Sky”, Jonathan has also written and paper-engineered a number of pop-up books.
Vanessa Cabban grew up between boarding school in England and wherever her nomadic parents were living: Africa, Spain, Belgium and the USA. Vanessa studied illustration at Brighton University and the Royal College of Art. She always had in interest in picture books but at art school she experimented with many different areas, especially printmaking. However, she realised that it was only drawing and watercolours that felt right to her and so began her career as an illustrator. Some of her better known titles include, “Bringing Down the Moon” and its sequel “No Place Like Home” and the Dear Series, “Dear Tooth Fairy”, “Dear Father Christmas” and “Dear Mermaid”.
