Rascal Takes Off

The Paul Jennings phenomenon began with the publication of Unreal! in 1985. Since then, readers all around the world have devoured his books.

Paul has written over one hundred stories and has been voted 'favourite author' more than forty times by children in Australia, winning every children's choice award. The top rating TV series Round the Twist and Driven Crazy are based on a selection of his enormously popular short-story collections such as Unseen! which was awarded the 1999 Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Children's Book. In 1995 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to children's literature and was awarded the prestigious Dromkeen Medal in 2001. Paul has sold more than 8 million books worldwide.

Bob Lea is a UK artist with an advertising background. His work includes the cover of Tongue-Tied! by Paul Jennings, as well as the covers of all nine Paul Jennings' backlist UN-titles (including Quirky Tails!), Paul Jennings' Spookiest, Trickiest and Funniest collections, among many others.

Bob is most notably the co-creator with Paul Jennings of the Rascal series of books for beginner readers, featuring Rascal the Dragon. The giant software company Maxon employs Bob Lea as a tester, so Bob's cutting edge 3-D illustrations are created using state of the art computer software and he is a leader in this field. Matched with his artist's eye and an apparent hotwire to childhood, Bob's originality and a zany sense of humour that he shares with Paul make him a brilliant match for these stories. Bob Lea lives in a small, picturesque village in the Cotswolds. He is married and has a son, who, like the boy in the Rascal stories, is called Ben!