Cirrus@Austlit

Jan Ormerod was trained in design and worked in art schools and colleges until her first child was born. It was at this time that Ormerod became interested in picture books and felt this would necessitate a move to either the eastern states of Australia or to London; the family subsequently moved to London.

In an interview, published in 2002 on Adhoc, a UK website, Ormerod says: '[My] early work was very much based on my own family, when my children were very small and details on day to day life were my whole world...I wrote the text - and the words and image were both mine. But now, no longer having small children I draw from a wider range of stimuli and sometimes I write the text, sometimes a text gets offered to me...Quite a proportion of my work now is illustrating texts written by other people.'

Ormerod illustrated works for children by both English and American writers including an edition of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan published by Viking Kestral in 1988.