People like Mélanie Watt

Mélanie Watt (born August 20, 1975 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian children's author and illustrator. She is best known for Scaredy Squirrel, which won the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award and was published in French as Frisson l'écureuil. Melanie Watt's other major picture book series is Chester, which is about a cat named Chester who competes with Watt for the chance to write and illustrate his books. The Chester book received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

As of 2012, she has sold over two million books that have been translated into 23 languages.

As a child, Mélanie Watt enjoyed drawing the comic strip character Garfield. The Scaredy Squirrel series is influenced by Watt's childhood experiences, including her childhood fear of sharks. She received a BA in graphic design from the Université du Québec à Montréal. In 1999, while enrolled in an illustration class taught by Michele Lemieux, Watt wrote her first story, Leon the Chameleon.