Counting Down with Mrs Koala

It's publication day for Mrs Koala's Beauty Parlour! 

Catherine and I are so delighted to see this gorgeous creature out in the wild now. You can make your very own booking to visit her parlour through the pages of this book - and see the menagerie of animals who visit for a perm, a trim, a facial, even a piercing - WHAAAA??

Huge thanks to my brilliant publisher Lisa Berryman and superb editor Eve Tonneli, for making this book such a pleasure to illustrate (and thanks to Shirley Tran for the cover design). I loved taking Cath's hilarious text and making it a visual feast - there's lot to see and you can even find Mrs Koala's keys on every spread.

As a counting book for little ones, I thought it might be fun to give you an illustration peek from 10 to 1. 

Kids - can you guess which animals might be appearing in each one? I'll give you some clues. This will also be posted on my Instagram, so maybe you can hop on over there and guess in the comments. Just head here!

Have fun - and don't forget to book in to Mrs Koala's Beauty Parlour sometime soon!

Learn more about this adorable counting book right here and see an animation of my illustrations here. Written by Catherine Jinks, illustrated by Tania McCartney using Procreate, cover design by Shirley Tran from HarperCollins Design Studio, published by Working Title Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Children's Books.

10 - slippery creatures who love the water and lay lots and lots of eggs. They can drink water through their skin. They love to hop, but they are not kangaroos!

9 - prickly creatures who have as many as 30,000 'quills' on their bodies, they have big teeth just like beavers. Their teeth are orange, and no, they don't eat oranges!

8 - growly creatures who live in the jungle, with soft coats that make them very hard to spot. They love to swim but they are not fish!

7 - fluffy creatures with beautiful, thick fur and a long tail. They are very good at swimming and burrowing and weaselling out of tight spots but they're not wombats!

6 - best-friendly creatures who love to run and play. Their sense of smell is 40 times better than humans, but they are not elephants! (Yes, elephants are said to have the strongest sense of smell.)

5 - intelligent creatures who love to wallow in mud and sing to their babies. They can't sweat and they love belly rubs but they're not dogs!

 

4 - active creatures with bright pink faces and... bums! (tee hee). They love to climb trees but spend most of their time on the ground. No, they are not kids!

3 - woolly creatures with rectangular pupils and coats that never ever stop growing. They have almost 360-degree vision but no, they're not owls!

2 - squeaky creatures who don't like the cold and can squeeze through the tiniest of gaps. They will eat almost anything, especially cheese! And no, they are not your Dad.

1 - a highly-skilled creature who works very hard, drinks tea and eats only one kind of leaf. She has poor eyesight - and keeps losing her keys!