Tony Ross

The creator of the Little Princess series, Tony Ross has penned over 100 books and illustrated more than 2,000, bringing characters to life for some of the world’s best-loved children’s authors....

Ross was born in 1938 in London but the outbreak of war saw his family move to Cheshire. Drawing came naturally to Ross but he credits his career choice to his magician father and his great-grandfather (who was an illustrator for Charles Dickens); both men showed him it was possible to pursue fun and fulfilment in work. After attending the Liverpool Regional College of Art, Ross took up a post in an advertising agency before moving into teaching and drawing cartoons – some of his work appeared in Punch and the News of the World .

It was while employed as a lecturer in Illustration at Manchester Polytechnic that Ross first turned to writing. Hugo and the Wicked Winter was one of his earliest forays into children’s books, with a reworking of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in 1976 marking the beginning of his long association with Andersen Press. Ross went on to create a series of updated fairy tales over the following years.

The first of his forty picture books following the trials and tribulations of the Little Princess, I Want My Potty , was issued in 1986 and commended for the Kate Greenaway Medal. While three more titles followed in the 1990s, it wasn’t until the next decade that the series took off, and in 2006 they were adapted for television.

Alongside the early Little Princess titles, Ross began his collaboration with Jeanne Willis on the popular Dr Xargle books. Published between 1988 and 1993, the six novels feature an extra-terrestrial teacher who teaches his pupils about life on Earth, even taking them on a field trip to experience the world for themselves.

Another long-running partnership began in 1994 with the first of Francesca Simon’s Horrid Henry novels, and Ross has also worked with such names as Roald Dahl, Michael Rosen, David Walliams and Michael Palin, providing the illustrations for his 2016 A Sackful of Limericks .

Still resident in Cheshire, and as prolific as ever, Ross was the UK nominee in 2004 for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.