I was commissioned to illustrate a series of 44 books – a ‘synthetic phonics’ reading scheme, initially for use in schools. Due to time constraints, I illustrated 25 of them and Ashley Davison, who had worked with me on the TV series, illustrated the other 19 books.

I created a nuclear family of suburban crocodiles and a bunch of neighbouring feral birds.

The series started at a basic reading level, and then increased incrementally in stages. This meant that the early stories were written using only 9 letters of the alphabet!