About Simon

Simon was born in Chichester in 1988 and has lived there ever since, although he occasionally leaves to buy milk. After gaining a 1st class degree in History at Exeter University, he immediately put his skills to good use working as a barman at a local pub. He soon grew tired of the owner calling him Andy, and so, naturally, decided to become a primary school teacher. Teaching rekindled his love of children’s literature, particularly picture books, so much so that he had a go at writing his own. Deciding he was better at writing stories for children than he would ever be at teaching them, he made a swift exit from education (before the end of his PGCE…) to live the cliché of the writer who works in a bar. Almost immediately - well, only eight years later - he retired his apron and tea towel to write full-time.

Simon is obsessed with children's books: reading them, writing them, buying them, smelling them. His own have been published in more than 20 languages. YOU MUST BRING A HAT won the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book of the Year, I REALLY WANT THE CAKE was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and BE MORE BERNARD was shortlisted for the Dundee Picture Book Award, the InspiREAD Primary Book Award, and the West Sussex Picture Books to Shout About! Award.

Simon is represented by Sallyanne Sweeney at MMB Creative, and is published by Simon & Schuster Children’s UK, Templar Books (Bonnier), Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury and Little Tiger Press.

Selected Interviews

ReadingZone Interview for I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CALL MY CAT (January 2017)

Picture Book Club Interview with Fiona Barker for I REALLY WANT TO WIN (May 2019)

Dual Q&A with Nathan Reed for ACHOO! for The Federation of Children’s Book Groups (August 2022)

LoveReading4Kids Q&A for I REALLY WANT TO WIN (June 2019)

FAQs

  • I’ve always enjoyed writing and, growing up, wrote a lot of nonsense in my free time – so you could say not much has changed. But I never had a clue what I wanted to do as a career, and becoming an author just never occurred to me. But…

    …during English sessions in the university-based part of my teacher training course, I discovered I loved picture books. Each session would start with the tutor reading a picture book, and I just thought, "These are great!" either because they made me laugh or moved me. Mo Willems’ Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus and Oliver Jeffers’ The Heart and the Bottle are two that I remember well from those sessions.

    Long story short, I decided I wasn't a great fit for teaching, quit my PGCE, and decided I'd have a go at this instead... After six months of submissions, rejections, revisions and far too much refreshing of emails, I signed with my agent in October 2013.

  • Truthfully, I have no idea!

    And having no idea where you get your ideas from can be a bit scary, because not only does it make you feel like a massive imposter, who hasn’t a clue how to do their job, it’s also a very short journey from ‘I have no idea’ to ‘I have no ideas’ – which is an even more terrifying problem.

    But really, ideas are anywhere and everywhere - it’s just a case of recognising them, or searching for them, or, often, waiting for them to find you. Some authors probably have a tried and tested process and method for coming up with ideas, but I’m not one of them.

    I do read a lot of books though, which I find normally helps fire up my imagination…

  • Probably my favourite thing about creating picture books is the part of the process that I’ve basically nothing to do with – and that’s seeing the story’s artwork for the first time!

    It’s so exciting to see how an illustrator has brought to life the words and characters in my manuscript, how they’ve interpreted the story and created the visual world for it. I’ve been incredibly spoilt to work with such brilliant illustrators, and always look forward to seeing the magic they work.

    I also love the feeling of excitement and possibility that comes with the arrival of a new idea, especially if it’s immediately clear that it’s a really good one that readers will enjoy.

  • It find it almost impossible to answer this question, as I love so many books!

    But if I absolutely have to choose one then I would probably go for This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen.

    Probably.

  • With the very rare exception, I do all my writing at my desk in my study at home, as I need the peace and quiet and as few distractions as possible – especially with my pitiful attention span!

  • I always write down (somewhere, in some form) every idea I have - I learned early on that relying on memory to recall an idea is a terrible, terrible mistake! Thinking ‘I’ll remember that later’ is fine…until it’s not, because you’ve forgotten what  ‘that’ was.

    If I don’t have a notebook or paper to hand, then I’ll write things down in Notes on my phone, then transfer these to paper later.

    I find the physical act of writing things by hand helps aid creativity, and I’ll do all of the initial planning and experimenting with pencil and paper. Once I know roughly what the story is, I’ll move to my laptop and start working it up using that.

    Given how many changes to words, sentences, verses and the plot that I make as I go along, it’s just far more efficient this way – otherwise I’d be constantly crossing or rubbing out what I’d just written, were I working by hand.

  • No ‘secret’ tips; I’m sure all my advice could be found from another source elsewhere, and there’s loads of helpful information online about submitting to agents and the industry in general.

    But I think the following are important/helpful to remember:

    Read, read, read – to get to know what makes a successful picture book, the market, where you/your books might fit in it, and how you can stand out.

    Keep in mind the need to be commercial. This has become increasingly apparent to me with each rejection! Books don’t necessarily need to have a ‘message’, but they do need to have a strong ‘hook’.

    Be patient, resilient and persevere. There’s a lot of waiting to be done if you’re an author – for replies to emails, for books to be published, to receive payments due. There’s a lot of rejection and it can be tempting to give up. I wasn’t naïve when I started, but I did think that after I’d had a few books published and a (tiny) bit of success, getting publishing contracts would be easier, but it hasn’t felt that way. So keep going!

  • Writing can be very solitary, so I enjoy socialising with real-life humans away from the strange things I've made up in my head, particularly if doing so involves food - I LOVE food!

    It can also be very sedentary so I try to get out and exercise at least once every couple of years or so…