illustrated my parent book: Reading Magic. She has new cartoons on her web-site every month, and sometimes gorgeous, diminutive water colour paintings which she sells. In June 2002 I found on her website a little water colour painting of a sheep: a heavenly, pale green, woolly sheep standing in a dark green field. I fell in love with it. Judy had always wanted to write and illustrate a picture book and I felt immediately that this divine green sheep would be a great main character, so on June 2nd I wrote to her. Dear Judy, The Green Sheep is a brilliant starting character for the kids' book that you are going to write one day if I have any influence on you whatsoever. Why is it green? Where does it live, and does it live all alone? Does it perhaps have hopes of being a red sheep instead? Does it set out on a quest to change its colour? Is it thwarted in its quest: at one point becoming unbecoming stripes, for example, by accident? Does it find a new colour and happiness or does it decide that after all being green is what it loves best? There: you have the first draft. It's yours. With love. Mem xxx She was excited. She sent back a long answer in which she said, among other things: '...write a children's book yourself for me to illustrate, I'd love that.' I was wild with excitement and felt like starting right away. There followed