Robin Jarvis - Illustrator

Robin Jarvis is a British children’s author who has entertained (and pleasantly terrified) generations of children with his brilliantly imagined dark fantasy stories, including The Deptford Mice and Whitby Witches series. He studied graphic design in Newcastle and then worked in television and advertising making model monsters and puppets before writing The Dark Portal, the first book in the Deptford Mice series, which was the runner up for the Smarties book prize in 1989. 

In 1988, when he was a model maker by profession, Robin Jarvis had just moved to Deptford and was busy working on a huge green model alien for Channel 4! He used to produce sketches of the area and strangely enough, of rodents, and when an editor saw these drawings she asked whether Robin had a story to go with them. Exchanging modelling tools for a pen, Robin produced the result that we know today, and from there his body of children's fantasy adventures began to grow….

Shortlisted in the past for the Carnegie Prize and Smarties Award, Robin has won the Lancashire Libraries Children's Book of the Year Award twice and has a cult following among children. He lives in Greenwich, London.