John Patience was born in Lancashire, England. He has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember and trained in typography and book design at the Harris College in Preston, Lancashire. After college, he worked briefly as a designer for a couple of publishers in London, England but he really wanted to have his own children's books published. He did various jobs to earn a living, whilst writing and developing his skills as an illustrator. John's first self-authored illustrated children's book was published in 1980 - The Seasons in Fern Hollow. Over the next few years this grew into four further series called Tales from Fern Hollow, eventually totalling 17 titles. Since then John has retold and illustrated many classic children's fairy tales and stories, as well as writing and illustrating lots more stories of his own. He has had more than 100 titles published in many countries around the world and translated into many languages. He has written, designed and illustrated both "flat" books and pop-up books. In 2019, for the second time, John was on the expert jury for Russian publisher, Rosman's, "New children's book" competition - one of the largest Russian competitions in the field of children's and youth literature. From May 2019 many of John's books are being re-published by Talewater Press and are available again to buy new in English: please see www.talewaterpress.co.uk You can see also lots of John's books at www.patience.co.uk/john www.johnpatience.co