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He is a New York Times bestselling, multi-award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books. He was named Illustrator of the Year at the 2025 British Book Awards (the Nibbies) and was the official World Book Day Illustrator from 2019 to 2021.
His first picture book, Blown Away, was published in 2014 and became only the second illustrated book in history to win the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. It was followed by GRRRRR!, Odd Dog Out, Sunk! and Kevin. All four were nominated for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal or other major prizes, and Odd Dog Out was nominated for eight literary awards in total, winning two of them. Next came the Dinosaur Juniors series, which began with the award-winning Happy Hatchday. After that, Show and Tell won the 2020 Sheffield Children’s Book Award. Later picture books include Dog Gone, An Odd Dog Christmas, The Blue-footed Booby (nominated for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration) and Gigantic. Gigantic was a New York Times bestseller and won four awards, including the FCBG Children’s Book Award for Younger Readers. Rob was an official World Book Day author in 2024, and his book Charlie McGrew & the Horse That He Drew went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list. His most recent picture books are I Follow the Fox (2024), When I Grow Up I’d Like to Be… (2025), which was bookshop.org’s Children’s Book of the Month, and South (2026).
His books are regulars on CBeebies Bedtime Stories, read by Tom Hardy, Rick Astley, Cody Rhodes, Chris Kamara and Mark Bonnar. Tom Hardy read An Odd Dog Christmas as the 2021 Christmas Eve story.
Rob’s first middle-grade novel, Peanut Jones and the Illustrated City, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2021. It was followed by Peanut Jones and the Twelve Portals and Peanut Jones and the End of the Rainbow. All three are bestsellers, and Twelve Portals won Cover of the Year at The Week Junior Book Awards. In 2026 he launched a new series, The Moonhaven Chronicles, with The Last Wolf, which was named a Waterstones Book of the Month.
Alongside his own books, Rob illustrates for other authors, including Michael Bond (of Paddington fame), Jeff Brown (Flat Stanley), Philip Ardagh, Piers Torday, Jenny Pearson and Garth Jennings.
In March 2020, when schools closed because of the pandemic, he started #DrawWithRob, a series of free twice-weekly draw-along videos for families at home. The videos were watched millions of times around the world and drew international media coverage. On 21 May 2020, 45,611 households joined a live class, setting a Guinness World Record for the largest online art class ever. That July, the Prime Minister named him a Point of Light in recognition of his impact on the community.
The project has since become a hugely popular series of activity books. The first won the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Award 2020, and all nine titles are number-one bestsellers. They were followed by the My First Draw With Rob series for pre-schoolers, covering dinosaurs, unicorns and vehicles.
Before becoming a full-time author and illustrator, Rob was art director of the Observer Magazine, NME, SKY and Just Seventeen. He lives in London with his wife and three daughters. He hasn’t given up hope that, maybe, one of them will go to an Arsenal match with him one day.
