Dianne (Di) Bates, BA Dip Teaching, has published 130+ books mostly for young readers. Some have won national and state literary awards including two Australian children’s book choice awards (KOALA and WAYRBA). Some of her books have sold overseas and in translation. Di has received Grants and Fellowships from the Literature Board of the Australia Council and has toured for the National Book Council.
Di has undertaken commissioned writing for many organisations and has worked on the editorial team of the NSW Department of Education School Magazine. She was co-editor of a national children’s magazine, Puffinalia (Penguin Books) and editor of another national children’s magazine, Little Ears.
In 2008, Di was awarded The Lady Cutler Award for distinguished services to children’s Literature. In 2014, she founded the Australian Children’s Poetry blog
Currently Di edits Buzz Words (All the Buzz about Children’s Books), a fortnightly online magazine she founded in 2006 for those in the Australian children’s book industry. Di lives near Wollongong, NSW, Australia, with her prize-winning YA author husband, Bill Condon.
Being an only child, Patricia spent much of her time living in her imagination, bringing it to life through drawing and illustration. She loves exploring colour and playing with positive and negative spaces. Her work is vibrant and whimsical, with an underlying sense of a narrative. Patricia believes every illustration should tell a story, whether it is accompanied by text or not.
This will be Trish’s second children’s picture book with Little Pink Dog Books – the first being The Glint of Gold. Trish’s next book with Little Pink Dog Books will be Monet Chases the Light, written by Jenny Gahan and to be published in late 2023.
As a small boy goes to bed, he checks his bedroom for monsters like Heeby Jeeby, Creepy Critter and the Toe Taster. He looks under his bed, in his cupboard, behind the curtains. Satisfied they are not there he jumps into bed with his teddy bear. Before saying goodnight to his babysitter, she reads him a story about a boy just like him who tames monsters. ‘I want to be a Big Boss, just like Max in the story,’ the boy whispers. In his sleep the monsters appear, but they can’t scare the boy as he knows they’re not real. The monsters do as they’re told by the boy who is the big boss. They jiggle and jive with the boy, just like Max in the story his babysitter read. They wiggle their big bottoms and jiggle their jelly bellies, and beat their hairy chests. They howl and yodel and make lots of noise. But just who is the boss? The boy? Or the monsters? And in the morning, before school, we finally find out who is the real Big Boss!
