Andy Griffiths

Bestselling children’s author Andy Griffiths has penned over 40 books whose humour has encouraged even the most reluctant of readers to open the pages and his Treehouse series has sold more than 10 million copies across 35 countries. ...

Born in Melbourne in 1961, Griffiths grew up making storybooks, cartoons and magazines for his friends and family before leaving school and completing a degree in literature. Realizing his future didn’t lie in his punk band he became a high-school English teacher, soon discovering that many of his students were unenthused by the subject but enjoyed a good laugh. Falling back on his childhood hobby he started writing and distributing funny short stories to engage them, and the strength of reaction he received encouraged him to venture into self-publishing.

It wasn’t long before Griffiths left his profession in order to write full-time and crossed paths with illustrator Terry Denton. The duo have since created over 30 books together, starting with Just Tricking in 1997 and introducing the Treehouse series in 2011. Now popular internationally the Treehouse books see a teenaged Andy and Terry become embroiled in one mad-cap escapade after another as they try to produce books amid the distractions of a treehouse whose 143 storeys (so far) include an ice-skating rink, a watermelon-smashing room and a human pinball machine.

More recently Griffiths has embarked on his You & Me series, which uses comic-strip style artwork to present fantastical stories as memories in which the reader features, helping to draw young fans into the tales.

An ambassador for The Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the Pyjama Foundation, Griffiths remains ‘passionate about harnessing the power of laughter to supercharge children’s literacy’ and was named Australian Children’s Laureate for 2026–27.