John Shelley has journeyed from London to Tokyo and back again, on the way exploring concrete jungles, tangled forests, soaring volcanoes and ocean bottoms, all of which have found their way into his children’s book illustrations. With a particular love of fantasy, and technique based on pen & ink drawings and watercolour, to date he’s illustrated over 50 titles, many of them for the Japanese and US markets. Recent releases have been the spooky adventure Halloween Forest (Holiday House, USA) and his retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk Jack to Mame no Ki (Fukuinkan Shoten, Japan). Autumn 2013 will see the release of the picture book The Stone Giant (Charlesbridge, USA), the story of Michelangelo’s creation of the statue of David.