Liz Pichon on the inspiration for her 16.5 million-selling Tom Gates books

“I think it’s because I write about things that are very relatable,” reckons his creator. “Some things in childhood don’t change – those relationships with siblings, friends, pets. I don’t tend to put in lots of technology or anything that dates. I’d much rather stick to storylines that all children from all different parts of the world can relate to.”

Like many children’s writers, it is Pichon’s mission to stimulate imaginations as much as instil a love of reading, with the hope that one might lead to the other. “If you don’t like reading and books, shutters can come down,” she says. “I’m always trying to explain to children the connection between their own lives and stories and how they can get those ideas out of their head and on to a piece of paper in any way, shape or form so they don’t feel if books and reading aren’t for them, that that’s it.”

For Pichon, it’s personal. As a child, she was a voracious lover of comics, drawing and music – and also dyslexic. “I was that kid at school,” she says, “quite bright and enthusiastic but it never translated into exams. It was always a struggle and even though I was good at writing and drawing that was never thought of as important as all the other subjects. So you go through school thinking that the things you are good at are not very important.”

Consequently, Pichon didn’t have the confidence to start writing until she was in her mid-40s. “I never thought that world was open to me,” she says. “I still think about how it made me feel when I first started writing books and doing events, going back in to schools to read aloud in front of teachers. That was terrifying, so a way of getting over that anxiety about having to do the things I used to find difficult when I was younger was to add in drawings and doodles and try and bring the books to life in a way I felt comfortable doing. I never set out to write books that children with dyslexia or reluctant readers would enjoy. Instinctively I wanted to make books that I thought I would enjoy at that age.”

Pichon’s route into writing was circuitous. Her first job was working in the art department at Jive Records in her native north London, organizing photo sessions and designing record sleeves for artists as diverse as Billy Ocean, Samantha Fox and Wee Papa Girl Rappers. This seemingly ideal outlet for her creativity was not as glamorous as it sounds. “The art department was at the back of the building past the bins in a Portacabin,” she recalls. “It was a real learning curve, making album covers with Cow Gum and sticking things together. It was a baptism of fire.”

Next, she took a job designing library music album covers for Warner Chappell Music and Bruton Music before moving into illustration. Noting the lack of humour in the stories she was asked to illustrate, she started writing her own, annotating with margin doodles and different fonts to create a dynamic visual language.

She has pushed those elements to an almost psychedelic degree in her new series of graphic novels for younger readers. The Mubbles are a fantastical family group of colourful creatures from the Isle of Smile whose acid-tinged adventures in nature and the environment recall a 21st century Magic Roundabout-meets-The Clangers.

READ MORE: Maggie O'Farrell on how family history informed her new novel: 'These are my people'

Pichon will be literally making a song and dance about her two series when she visits the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Along with her husband, musician and producer Mark Flannery, she wrote a host of ridiculously catchy songs to accompany the Tom Gates television series, including music for Tom’s band Dog Zombies, and has now doubled down with music and movement for the Mubbles, as showcased on Pichon’s YouTube channel (and published by her previous employers Warner Chappell). This is not her first brush with choreography. In 2017, Pichon was part of a (briefly) Guinness World Record-breaking bid to create the world’s largest disco dance (to the Bee Gees’ Night Fever).

She will bring this spectrum of joyous expression to the festival with games, music, art and chat, all designed to be a gateway to creativity for the kids (and adults) in attendance. “I can promise you, it’s anything but a talk,” she says. “The whole event is all about bringing both books to life and sharing about the characters, where I get my ideas from and where the books come from. When I first started doing events, I used to treat it a little bit like a children’s party so the hour goes by really quickly. I want anyone who comes to my event to leave it feeling really enthusiastic and inspired to write and draw and make their own stories and pick up more books and get reading.”

Pichon herself keeps on trucking (when we speak, she is on holiday in Corfu, still determined to write her 1,000 words a day). Following Meet the Mubbles, When Berry Met Terry and The Good, the Bad and the Perky, a fourth Mubbles book will arrive next January, a Tom Gates film script is being shopped around and she intends to write a sequel to her lockdown book, Shoe Wars. “I’m already thinking about new titles for Tom and as long as I’m coming up with new ideas, enjoying writing them and the children are enjoying reading them then there’s always places to go. We need the readers of the future and we need all kinds of stories.”

Tom Gates Is Not Famous Yet by Liz Pichon is published by Scholastic on 8 October. Liz Pichon is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival at 10am on 23 August

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