Thompson, Carol 1951-

Personal

Born February 7, 1951, in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England; married Robert Thompson (an architect); children: Mark, Daniel, Charlie. Education: Leicester School of Art, B.A., 1972.

Addresses

Home and office—The Hollies, 41 Tamworth Rd., Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire LE65 2PW, England.

Career

Freelance artist and illustrator. Designer for greeting card companies, including G. Fraser, Aries, Paperlink, Gallery Five, Habitat, The Art Group, W.H. Smiths, and Gisela Graham. Exhibitions: Work exhibited at galleries at Barbican Centre, London, England; Commonwealth Institute, London; Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London; W.H. Smith Book Awards, and Victoria & Albert Museum.

Member

Society of Authors, Children's Writers and Illustrators Group.

Awards, Honors

Mother Goose Award runner-up, 1988, for Busy Baby's Day Afternoon, Busy Baby's Day Wake up Time, Busy Baby's Day Morning, and Busy Baby's Day Bedtime; Frank Warner Memorial Gold Medal runner-up for most promising young designer.

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Busy Baby's Day: Afternoon, Macdonald (London, England), 1987, published as Busy Baby's Afternoon, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

Busy Baby's Day: Wake up Time, Macdonald (London, England), 1987, published as Busy Baby's Wake up Time, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

Busy Baby's Day: Morning, Macdonald (London, England), 1987, published as Busy Baby's Morning, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

Busy Baby's Day: Bedtime, Macdonald (London, England), 1987, published as Busy Baby's Bedtime, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

Time, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1989.

In My Bedroom, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1989, published as Piggy Goes to Bed, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.

In My Bathroom, MacRae (London, England), 1990, published as Piggy Washes Up Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1997.

In My Kitchen, MacRae (London, England), 1991.

In My Garden, MacRae (London, England), 1991.

Baby Days, Orchard Books (London, England), 1991.

Number Rhymes, Barron's Educational (Hauppauge, NY), 1999.

Bedtime Rhymes, Barron's Educational (Hauppauge, NY), 1999.

Author's books have been translated into Welsh.

ILLUSTRATOR

June Woodman, Glo Bug, Ladybird Books, 1986.

June Woodman, Glo Butterfly, Ladybird Books, 1986.

Sally Grindley, I Don't Want To!, Joy Street Books (Cambridge, MA), 1990.

Susan Hill, Septimus Honeydew, MacRae (London, England), 1990.

Joyce Dunbar, I Wish I Liked Rice Pudding, Simon & Schuster (London, England), 1991.

Joyce Dunbar, Can Do, Simon & Schuster (London, England), 1992.

Diana Hendry, Back Soon!, MacRae (London, England) 1993, Troll Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 1993.

The Much Better Story Book, Red Fox (London, England), 1993.

Kathy Henderson, Bounce Bounce Bounce: A Lap Game Book for Babies, Candlewick Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Kathy Henderson, Bumpety Bump: A Lap Game Book for Babies, Candlewick Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Joyce Dunbar, Oops-a-Daisy!, and Other Tales for Toddlers, Walker (London, England), 1995.

Christopher Stewart Clark and Michael Harrison, The New Oxford Treasury of Children's Verse, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1995.

John Foster, compiler, Finger Rhymes (also see below), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

John Foster, compiler, Counting Rhymes (also see below), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

John Foster, compiler, Chanting Rhymes (also see below), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

John Foster, compiler, Action Rhymes (also see below), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

John Foster, compiler, First Verses: Finger Rhymes, Action Rhymes, Chanting Rhymes, Counting Rhymes, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1997 Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1998, published as First Verses for the Very Young, 2003.

Frieda Wishinsky, Oonga Boonga, Dutton Children's Books (New York, NY), 1998.

John Foster, compiler, Playtime Rhymes, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1998.

John Foster, compiler, Food Rhymes, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1998.

John Foster, compiler, Bedtime Rhymes, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1998.

John Foster, compiler, Animal Rhymes, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1998.

Grace Cook, selector, Two Little Eyes, and Other Action Rhymes, Walker (London, England), 1999, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

Liss Norton, The Food Fiend, Oxford University Press (London, England), 1999.

John Foster, compiler, More First Verses, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1999.

John Foster, compiler, A Big Book of Counting and Chanting Rhymes, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1999.

Sally Grindley, A New Room for William, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

John Foster, compiler, Around the Day: Rhyme Time, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 2000.

Mary Risk, What's for Supper?= Was gibt es zum Abendessen?, Barron's Educational (Hauppauge, NY), 2000.

Mary Risk, What's for Supper?= Que hay para cenar?, Barron's Educational (Hauppauge, NY), 2000.

Mary Risk, What's for Supper?=Qu'est-ce qu'on mange ce soir?, Barron's Educational (Hauppauge, NY), 2000.

Nicola Moon, My Most Favorite Thing, Orchard (London, England), 2000, Dutton Children's Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Joyce Dunbar, I Wish I Could Count to a Million, Hodder (London, England), 2000.

John Foster, compiler, Around the Year, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 2001.

Shen Roddie, Goodbye, Hello!, Dorling Kindersley (New York, NY), 2001.

Bernard Ashley, Double the Love, Orchard Books (London, England), 2002.

Fran Swift, Old Blue Buggy, Dutton Children's Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Charlotte Zolotow, Hold My Hand: Five Stories of Love and Family, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2003.

Mia Hamm, Winners Never Quit!, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Amy Warren Hilliker, Little One, God Loves You, Zondervan (Grand Rapids, MI), 2004.

Amy Warren Hilliker, Little One, God Made You, Zondervan (Grand Rapids, MI), 2004.

Toby Forward, What Did You Do Today?: The First Day of School, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2004, published as The First Day of School, Doubleday (London, England), 2004.

Beverly Cleary, Two Times the Fun (includes The Real Hole, Two Dog Biscuits, The Growing-up Feet, and Janet's Thingamajigs), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Dori Hillestad Butler, My Mom's Having a Baby!, Albert Whitman (Morton Grove, IL), 2005.

Karen Hill, Owen's Walk, Tommy Nelson (Nashville, TN), 2006.

Jana Novotny Hunter, When Daddy's Truck Picks Me Up, Albert Whitman (Morton Grove, IL), 2006.

Contributor of artwork to Walker Book of Bedtime Stories, 1995, and The Walker Baby Bear, 1995. Regular illustrator for BBC magazine Playdays.

Adaptations

Author's books have been adapted for Australian children's television and British Broadcasting Corporation children's television shows Storytime and Blue Peter. Illustrations from Baby Days were adapted as a decorative frieze, Macmillan, 1991.

Sidelights

British author and illustrator Carol Thompson combines bright and cheery water color and pen-and-ink drawings with a simple text in her books for young children. Time, one of her first self-illustrated books, follows a bear cub through a normal human-like day, as a clock on one side of each spread marks the time of day the young bear engages in activities such as eating breakfast and going to school. "Bright, cheery watercolors are the setting for an adorable bear," wrote Ilene Cooper in Booklist, and School Library Journal contributor Pamela Miller Ness dubbed Time "an attractive book that will be useful for learning purposes."

Thompson continues to follow the activities of typical youngsters through the pages of In My Bathroom, In My Bedroom In My Kitchen, and In My Garden, all of which feature a young pig. In each book, the pig performs the activities associated with the location denoted in the title. For example, In My Bathroom includes bathing, hair combing, and tooth brushing. After all these cleansing rituals are completed, the pig is sparkling clean but the bathroom is a mess. In My Bathroom was described as "a delightful, humorous story" by Cathleen

Towey in School Library Journal. Bed-making, dressing, playing, and getting ready for sleep are covered in In My Bedroom, while other facets of the pig's busy day are the focus of In My Kitchen and In My Garden.

In Baby Days Thompson shifts her focus from toddlers to babies and their daily activities. A wide variety of babies are depicted in the illustrations, often with their mothers, and simple, short rhymes describe the day from start to finish. The illustrations "dance across the pages and abound with familiar objects and images," related School Library Journal contributor Virginia E. Jeschelnig. Writing in Horn Book, Robert D. Hale maintained that Thompson "engages our attention immediately … and holds it," concluding that Baby Days is "a marvelous book."

In addition to other simple self-illustrated texts, such as Bedtime Rhymes and Number Rhymes, Thompson has created art for numerous picture books for other authors. My Most Favorite Thing by Nicola Moon, Winners Never Quit! by Olympic soccer player Mia Hamm, My Mom's Having a Baby! by Dori Hillestad Butler, When Daddy's Truck Picks Me Up by Jana Novotny Hunter, as well as several poetry anthologies by John Foster all benefit from the artist's gentle cartoon-style watercolor images depicting reassuring, likeable characters. In illustrating Sally Grindley's A New Room for William, about a boy dealing with a family move, Thompson's "charming … mixed-media illustrations are a comforting complement" to the text, according to School Library Journal contributor Doris Gebel. The "playful and colorful illustrations" she creates for My Mom's Having a Baby! "add exuberance to the text," concluded Martha Topol in the same periodical, while in Booklist Ilene Cooper observed that the illustrator "varies her pen-and-watercolor illustrations" for Toby Forward's What Did You Do Today?: The First Day of School "in surprising and eye-catching ways." Thompson's "bright, energetic cartoons depict [a] … child's ups and downs" while dealing with being bested at her favorite game in Winners Never Quit!, noted Blair Christolon in a School Library Journal review of Hamm's picture-book lesson in good sportsmanship. In contrast, Thompson's "soft watercolor" images "beautifully depict" an loving family in My Most Favorite Thing, according to Booklist critic Marta Segal.

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 1990, Ilene Cooper, review of Time, p. 921; December 1, 1991, review of Baby Days, pp. 706-707; April 15, 1994, Hazel Rochman, reviews of Bumpety Bump: A Lap Game Book for Babies, and

Bounce Bounce Bounce: A Lap Game Book for Babies, p. 1541; September 1, 1995, Hazel Rochman, review of Oops-a-Daisy!, and Other Tales for Toddlers, p. 84; May 1, 1999, Shelley Townsend-Hudson, review of Oonga Boonga, p. 1602; May 1, 2001, Hazel Rochman, review of Around the Day: Rhyme Time, p. 1686; December 15, 2001, review of Goodbye, Hello!, p. 741; August, 2004, Ilene Cooper, review of What Did You Do Today?: The First Day of School, p. 1947; September, 1, 2004, review of Winners Never Quit!, p. 114; October 1, 2004, Ilene Cooper, review of Little One, God Loves You, p. 346; April 1, 2005, review of My Mom's Having a Baby!, p. 1358.

Horn Book, December, 1991, Robert D. Hale, review of Baby Days, p. 771.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1990, review of Time; May 1, 2003, review of Old Blue Buggy, p. 685; July 15, 2004, review of What Did You Do Today?, p. 684; March, 2005, review of My Mom's Having a Baby!, p. 284; July 15, 2006, review of When Daddy's Truck Picks Me Up, p. 723.

Publishers Weekly, September 7, 1992, review of Baby Days, pp. 59-60; April 25, 1994, reviews of Bumpety Bump and Bounce Bounce Bounce, p. 76; August 14, 1995, review of Oops-a-Daisy!, and Other Tales for Toddlers, p. 82; October 30, 2000, review of A New Room for William, p. 74; April 14, 2003, review of Old Blue Buggy, p. 69; October 4, 2004, review of Winners Never Quit, p. 87.

School Library Journal, November, 1989, Pamela Miller Ness, review of Time, p. 95; February, 1991, Cathleen Towey, review of In My Bathroom, p. 75; January, 1992, Virginia E. Jeschelnig, review of Baby Days, p. 99; November, 2000, Doris Gebel, review of A New Room for William, p. 120; June, 2001, Jane Marino, review of Around the Day, p. 135; July, 2003, review of Old Blue Buggy, p. 108; November, 2003, Sally R. Dow, review of Hold My Hand, p. 120; September, 2004, review of Winners Never Quit!, p. 161; October, 2004, Maryann H. Owen, review of What Did You Do Today?, p. 113; October, 2006, DeAnn Okamura, review of When Daddy's Truck Picks Me Up, p. 113.