Bio

Melanie Shieldhouse is a wearer of many hats.  As a mother of two young, extremely cheeky monkeys, one of whom she home-schools, Mel is an expert at sneaking vegetables into things (zucchini muffins anyone?) and secretly removing the batteries from noisy toys (I’m sorry darling, I think the batteries ran out and unfortunately we don’t have any spare ones.  Yes it’s devastating for me too…).

Mel grew up in England but, unable to stand the weather any longer, she moved to Australia in 2002 to study Naturopathy.  She made her home in the Blue Mountains which, it turned out, had even worse weather.

Mel’s next move was much more successful, meteorologically speaking.  She and her partner spent almost two years in Phuket, Thailand.  They worked, had Thai massages, tried deep-fried crickets and had a baby.  After this they came back to Oz.

Six years on, Mel is living on the beautiful Sunshine Coast Hinterland with her hubby, two small children and two free-ranging guinea pigs.

She barely finds the time to write but when she does, she writes picture books inspired by her own children; middle-grade fiction and has a YA novel in the works too.