Kate Petty

Katharine Chapman, children's writer and publisher: born Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire 9 June 1951; married Michael Petty (one son, one daughter); died St Austell, Cornwall 22 May 2007.

Innovative, irreverent and energetic, Kate Petty blew through the sometimes staid world of children's information books like a gale-force wind. By the time of her death, she had around a hundred titles to her name, with four still to be published.

Born Katharine Chapman in Welwyn Garden City in 1951, the youngest of four children, she was educated at Bedales School and York University. Starting out as an editor at Jonathan Cape, she moved on to Phaidon and then to the Ilea publications department before deciding to go freelance once she was married with children.

While Kate Petty's first illustrated non-fiction books published in 1984 were unremarkable, she was all this time storing up ideas for her amazing series of pop-up information books still to come, starting with The Great Grammar Book (1996), which sold over a quarter of a million copies both in Britain and in 12 different languages abroad. Others after that in similar vein include The Terrific Times Table Book (1998), The Magnificent I Can Read Music Book (1999) and The Super Science Book (2002).

Children suspicious of titles suggesting any sort of educational agenda were soon won over by pages brimming witha combination of lift-the-flap, turn-the wheel and pop-up devices, the whole package brightly illustrated by Petty's long-serving collaborator Jennie Maizels. Learning the times tables can never have been so much fun before, with space travel, Noah's Ark, monsters, sweet factories, porpoises and a giant hand all brought into play in order to turn what used to be a chore into something genuinely entertaining. The same was true of topics including geography, gardening and punctuation, where once again Petty put her enormous talents to use in the cause of making information extra child-friendly while still remaining accurate and helpful.

Her many other less dramatic picture books not requiring the services of a paper engineer still promised immediate interest with titles like I Didn't Know that Dinosaurs Laid Eggs (1997), Crocodiles Yawn to Keep Cool (1998) and Awesome Facts About Tidal Waves (1999). On a different tack, Made With Love: how babies are made (2003) tells this immemorial story with directness allied to tact and sensitivity.

There were also forays into teenage fiction. Her series Girls Like You (2000) is made up of eight separate novellas, each named after a different principal character from the same age group. Within them, pubescent girls talk incessantly about first boyfriends and sometimes quarrel with younger siblings and parents while all the time attempting to come to terms with the changes that are happening to them physically and emotionally. Written with wit and understanding, these stories fulfil the same sort of role for British pre-teenagers that Judy Blume's novels did for young American readers. They have recently been collected together in Summer Heat (2004) and Summer Cool (2005).

Elsewhere, Makeover (2004) is a stand-alone story for teenagers, describing how two image-conscious schoolgirls eventually learn that there is more to life than how they look. This was followed by Tales of Beauty and Cruelty (2005), a collection of Hans Andersen stories skilfully reworked into contemporary settings. The tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes" now transmutes into "The King of Cool", starting off with a boy obsessed with wearing only the best of branded clothing.

In 2006 Petty, Maizels and the paper engineer Corina Fletcher won the Royal Society/Aventis General Prize for the best scientific book aimed at children under 14. This was The Global Garden (2005), a pop-up book acting as a guide to the natural world by giving children enough knowledge to explore the environment while helping them to understand how humans make best use of plants. Described by one reviewer as "a beautiful presentation that accompanies a bounty of surprises", it was inspired by the Eden Project in Cornwall. This was where Petty now worked, in charge of creating a list of children's books appropriate for this venture.

But along with her husband Mike, publishing manager for the Eden Project, she still kept on the family house in north London, writing in a shed in the back garden, where she also liked to entertain fellow authors. Her warm personality and singular charm made her universally popular.

Nicholas Tucker

Interesting? Click here to explore further