Poppa Bombola looked in the cot – looked in the cot and got such a shock.

He’s lost his darling daughter!

The beauty of picture books is that you can get two stories working at once – the story that the words tell, and the story that the pictures tell. In Where’s my Darling Daughter? I was going for the pantomime effect. Katharine McEwen’s illustrations positively invite children to join in and shout “Look behind you!”

I vividly remember my three year old son going AWOL in the supermarket. There I was, momentarily mesmerised by the price of baked beans, and the next thing I knew I’d lost my son. I couldn’t find him for all of five minutes. It felt like the end of the world. So I wanted to write a story that was funny and safe, but captured a bit of that feeling. I guess I hoped that if I showed little children just how precious they are to their parents maybe they’d be a little bit less inclined to go wandering off at the first opportunity!