Bernadette Watts - Click to see all titles by this author.

Bernadette Watts was born in England and is known throughout Europe simply as “Bernadette.” She studied at Maidstone College of Art in Kent for a time under the tutelage of Brian Wildsmith. Her mother was an artist and her father an architect; both took a great and thoughtful interest in her story writing and art. Bernadette believes she inherited her mother’s freestyle, colorful, and joyful painting and her father’s very detailed pen-and-ink drawing.

Bernadette’s parents read beloved classics—mostly Beatrix Potter and Grimm’s Fairy Tales—to her and her brother every night at bedtime. She knew these stories by heart and continues to have a profound love for them. She began writing and illustrating these visual treasures with whatever she had at hand—even brown paper bag scraps saved during the scarce times after World War II. At the age of four she wrote stories a hardcover notebook her father managed to get—now preserved in Japan by a major publisher.

Bernadette’s magical illustrations are delicately drawn children; lively animals; interesting architecture; and whimsical forests, flowers, and fields. Her colorful pastoral and full-of-life art is created with texta markers, wax crayon, and oil pastel.

Bernadette enjoys including charming childhood memories in her illustrations. A page in her autobiographical The Smallest Snowflake shows her walking by her little Welsh cottage, carrying a parcel of illustrations to the post office in nearby Snowdonia.

“I have always written stories and drawn pictures. The two things have always been linked. I did not choose to make picture books at a certain age; it was there right from the start, just like eating or walking.”