Guess How Much I Love You

Anita Jeram was born and brought up in Portsmouth. She enrolled on a foundation course in visual studies at Manchester Polytechnic, followed by a degree course in illustration. Her tutor, David Hughes (also an illustrator), took some of her work to Walker Books and her first book, Bill's Belly Button, was published a year after she graduated. Her second book, It Was Jake!, was included on the National Curriculum SAT reading list. Since then she has been busy making numerous picture books with her publishers Walker Books, including her best known book, Guess How Much I Love You, which rapidly became established around the world as a new picture-book classic. Over a million copies were printed in the first year of publication and it was one of the best-selling children's books in both Britain and America. Guess How Much I Love You was shortlisted for the 1994 Kurt Maschler Award and for the Illustrated Children's Books category of the 1994 British Book Awards. Anita has worked with some of the U.K.'s best known authors including Dick King-Smith but mainly writes and illustrates her own books. She also makes greetings cards for Two Bad Mice and the illustrations from these have proved extremely popular. Anita lives in a renovated farmhouse next to the sea with her husband and three children, together with a menagerie of animals - that her daughter keeps adding to!