About

For a brief Bio, click here

Hello! I’m Meghan, a children’s author and artist. I write, craft and photo-illustrate picture books for children, starring two handmade puppet animals, set in nature. My studio is a beautiful forest, where I imagine their tiny world through the lens of a camera. It might seem an odd vocation, but it came about quite naturally…

As a quiet child called ‘Meghan Mouse’, I learned to read and sew at an early age, as the big human world felt too loud for me. I was more at home in my tiny world, which I created for toy mice. I made their houses out of anything I could find – food packages, Lego, old clothes – and when I wasn’t crafting, I pored over my picture books, wanting to crawl inside their idyllic worlds. If only they were real!

As an adult, I worked in the film industry as a costume maker for live actors, before eventually becoming costume designer for the stop-motion animated TV series, “Lunar Jim”. The tiny, detailed work on the 6″ high puppets reminded me how much I love miniature worlds, and spurred me to write my first novel for children about a tiny mouse who yearns for adventure. I was thrilled when The Stowaways was published! But as I began to write the sequel, I missed working with my hands – how could I write books and make tiny things?

While walking in the forest one day, I started taking photos from the perspective of a little mouse toy, imagining how it would actually feel to be a tiny creature in a forest. I was quickly taken away to a calm, idyllic world filled with depth and possibility; inspiring me so much that it became my new mission: to make the ‘real’ picture book I would have loved to crawl inside as a child. After designing and building two wire-framed puppet animals, I began to illustrate their story – set in a natural forest and captured by camera.

I still get to write stories but I’m also outside and hands-on; muddy and mosquito-bitten, trying to get the perfect shot of my puppets. It’s hard work, but fun! When the weather isn’t right for the shot I need, I make props for interior sets of their home inside a tree, using discarded scraps and found materials in nature, as my little characters might do. The result is pretty quirky – and very much the world I was trying to create as a child.

My goal in all my writing is to inspire children to connect with nature – to notice its tiny details and the patterns in the chaos – and to find a sense of belonging there. 

I’m thrilled to say that my first picture book, Rumie Goes Rafting, will soon be published in Canada and the USA in April 2024 (Owlkids books), and is already released in the Netherlands in Dutch (Maretak books, November 2023)!

I’m now working on book two – a story set in winter (a challenge to create, for sure!) To follow the journey, you can find me on Instagram.

To find out about my process, click In the Studio or On Location.