When the UK publisher Hodder became interested in A Mouse inside the Marmalade they asked me if I could come up with something similar to be published as a companion book - A Turtle in the Toilet was the result.
I didn't want this second book to be too similar to the first, so since all the animals in A Mouse inside the Marmalade had been small and familiar, I chose to make the animals in this book large and exotic instead.
I decided that these larger animals would be hiding in various items of furniture around the home. This was not a particularly original idea for a flap book, but I think that the other elements that were added to it - a strong rhyming text, ingenious pop-ups and the beautifully textured illustrations created by Caroline Jayne Church - have given this book a very distinctive feel.
The book uses the same format as A Mouse inside the Marmalade, with nine lift-the-flap pages interspersed with three flat pages and a large double-page pop-up at the end. In this book, the illustrations on the flat pages give clues to the identity of the enormous creature who is eventually discovered on the final spread.
This book is unusual for me because it includes a pull-tab mechanism. I designed a number of pull-tab mechanisms for one of my early, unpublished pop-up books Scraposaurus Wrecks, but I try to avoid using them, especially in Pre-school Books. In my experience, pull-tabs do not last very long in a toddler's hands. They get torn and creased and will often stop working after a few uses. I've have found that many pull-tab-like movements can be created by mechanisms that are triggered by turning a page or lifting a flap. The resulting movement is just as satisfying and the mechanism is far more robust and durable. Nevertheless, the use of a pull-tab mechanism seemed so appropriate for the pedal-bin in this book (you pull on the pedal to make the bin lid flip open and a penguin pop out) that I couldn't resist using one!
When the UK publisher Hodder became interested in 
