​I’ve been thinking about the sort of illustrations that would work for the Someone Like Me books for quite some time. I feel that the pictures in a children’s book say everything about it, and as much as the title will draw the child or their parent in.

I wanted to create a series of books for children with additional needs that  were as beautiful and colourful as any of the others in the book shop. Our children are different not less, but often books written for special needs kids end up  with poor quality paper, front cover design and type, and with black and white line drawn illustrations.

I looked at some of our favourite books: Mr Big, by Ed Vere, the Charlie and Lola books by Lauren Child, the Meg and Mog books by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pienkowski and Elephant and Piggie by Mo Willems. I love the vibrancy  of these books and the very distinctive characters.

The first book in the Someone Like Me series is about Sam and his reaction to his ASD diagnosis, and I had to ask whether kids with ASD relate to books in the same way as I do? My son seems to. However, as I spoke to professionals about children on the spectrum they reported that it might be better to reduce colour, which could be overly demanding, and have characters that are not given very distinctive features. As for example, giving Sam a yellow scarf might make kids on the spectrum think that they are not like Sam, because they do not have a yellow scarf, or even like scarves!

So, there is a big challenge here in making books relatable, fun and user friendly. Please do share any feedback and ideas that you have.