Award-winning author and illustrator Polly Dunbar is one of the most popular illustrators working in the UK today. In a career spanning three decades, she's created numerous beloved books for children.

Put Your Shoes On - her funny, insightful new picture book - is out with Walker in 2025.

In recent years, Polly and Eoin's Hug books sold upwards of 250,000 copies - translated into 25 languages.

Biography

Polly studied first at Norwich School of Art, and then at Brighton University.

Her best-selling picture book Penguin won the 2007 Nestlé Silver Award, BookTrust Early Years and Red House awards.

And her Tilly and Friends books became an animated BBC TV series, selling around the world.

Polly Dunbar's picture books as author-illustrator also include gems like A Lion is a Lion, Red Red Red, Something Fishy and Flyaway Katie.

She illustrates books by other authors too. Like Enid Blyton, Michael Rosen, Michael Morpurgo, Margaret Mahy and a great number more.

After The Hug, Polly and Eoin's much-loved reversible book, came While We Can't Hug. A book born out of the pandemic, but also a universal story of friends separated.

So in that strange 2020 Christmas, with families across the UK facing Christmas apart, the BBC chose While We Can't Hug for broadcast on Christmas Day - read by Mr Tumble.

Hello, Mum (Faber 2021), Polly's first book for adults, grew out of her finely observed and very funny Instagram sketches of motherhood.

She's also the co-founder of award-winning puppet company Long Nose Puppets.

Polly Dunbar lives in Waveny Valley in Suffolk with her partner and their two boys. She's represented by The Catchpole Agency.