Magic of happy ever after for Sally

Buy The Smallest Girl Ever from Amazon.co.uk

After JK Rowling and Philip Pullman, Sally Gardner is the third bestselling author on Amazon's chidren's list, with her just-published Fairy Catalogue, a whimsical picture book based on the idea of a mail-order catalogue.

It's an impressive feat for someone who was so dyslexic as a child that she had to change her name from Sarah to Sally, because she couldn't figure out where the "h" in Sarah went, and when she used Microsoft for the first time, thought that the red and green lines under the words were decorative squiggles rather than indicators of her catastrophic spelling and grammar.

Although she now has three teenage children of her own, Sally is clear that her delicate, colourful illustrations of fairies and princesses and the stories she writes about children who triumph against adversity, all come from the child, rather than the storyteller, within. Hers was an unhappy and traumatic upbringing, and this is what most informs her work, despite its pretty and pleasing appearance.

She lives in a turn-of-the-century redbrick house in a leafy north London suburb, with her children, a dog and two cats. The place feels welcoming and cosy, its colours muted. Lots of pictures on the walls. Although divorced, she has attempted to create for her own children the happy home atmosphere she missed out on.

Her parents went through an acrimonious divorce when she was nine. "My brother and I were shovelled around a lot, and told to think of all the Christmas presents we would

get as compensation." At Frances Holland Junior School, she was taunted and called Silly Sally. "I was bul-lied because I didn't have a mummy who picked me up, and I couldn't read or write. I did lovely pictures all over my 11-plus papers, but couldn't write the answers to the questions."

These days she would fare better, but back then, dyslexia was not recognised as a learning disorder that could be overcome. She was sent to school after school, including a boarding school "for maladjusted children who'd suffered appalling abuse." But, at least she was left alone. What kept her sane was her ability to spin stories out of her imagination and, of course, to draw. Her mother promised her that if she could pass her O-levels, she could go to art school.

"I memorised everything, including the spelling, and passed more exams than any of the other girls." This was her first triumph, and the part in the fairy story when the happy ending should have loomed into sight. In some ways it did: a first-class degree in theatre design at the Central School of Art, an Arts Council scholarship, and then a career as a theatre costume and set designer. But the frustrations remained: "No one took me seriously. My sets were incredibly butch, and being dyslexic, I had problems with the ground plans."

IT has been 10 years since she left the theatre to become an illustrator. Her style reflects her love of theatre and costume: richly decorated backdrops, beading, silk flow-ers and jewelled borders, fairies and princesses swathed in frills, bows, gauzes and organzas, witches and ugly sisters with warty noses, wearing clashing spots and stripes: the stuff of pantomime and dreams. Not surprisingly, Sally dislikes the kind of "real-life" fiction that deals with parents splitting

up, incest or rape, murder or drugs. "Children know the fairy medium is another world; they can work out the problems in the story in a safe way." Classic fairy stories such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, were, she points out, devices to explain these same themes to pubescent girls: a father failing to protect his daughter, a jealous mother, the onset of menstruation, and so on. "Fairy tales are a very good vehicle for anger. It's difficult being small, you think you are all powerful; little children like to control their mummies and daddies. They want a fairy-tale family unit," she says, "and too often, their parents don't listen."

Here she is. The angry little girl who couldn't control her parents or the world around her. So when she grew up she created another, enchanted, dream world where the impotent child has magical powers and the endings are always happy.

???? Fairy Catalogue is published by Orion, £8.99; The Smallest Girl Ever, published by Dolphin, £3.99.