Three Cheers for Inventors! by Marcia Williams

Marcia Williams’ distinctive style developed through the illustrated letters she sent from boarding school to her parents overseas. She has now illustrated and retold her own popular versions of many literary classics in titles such as "Greek Myths" and "Mr. William Shakespeare's Plays". Her mother was a writer and her father was a playwright and theatre director which instilled in Marcia a lifelong love of writing She spent the early part of her life in Canton, Hong Kong, Nigeria and the Middle East as her step-father was a diplomat. Marcia never received any formal illustration training but it is a skill that has always come naturally to her. She had a number of jobs, including nursery teacher, which is when she developed her taste for story-telling to young children. Giving up teaching to paint, she studied watercolour at Richmond College and held some successful local exhibitions before a friend suggested that she took her work to show Walker Books which began her successful career in publishing. Marcia has written and illustrated numerous books since The First Christmas was published in 1987. Many of these have been retellings of classic stories - from Noah's Ark to Don Quixote - illustrated in her distinctive strip-cartoon style. She works in watercolours, which, she says, "are just unreliable enough to be interesting."