Terry Denton

Terry Denton was one of Australia's most beloved children's book illustrators and authors — a man whose restless, comic, and wildly inventive drawings made millions of children believe that drawing was their territory too. Born on 26 July 1950 in Melbourne, Victoria, he was the second youngest of five boys in a household where, as he often said, humour was everyday currency and ritual. Growing up alongside the Goon Show, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck, Terry was trained in comedy almost from the cradle. He studied architecture at university but left unhappy with that path, spending roughly seven years exploring animation, painting, theatre, etching, sculpture, and cartooning while working part-time in a music shop. That wandering was not wasted time — it shaped an artist who treated drawing as a form of thinking rather than mere decoration. His breakthrough came in 1985 with Felix and Alexander, which won the Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year in 1986. He never looked back. Over more than four decades, Denton wrote and illustrated more than 30 books of his own and illustrated works for Mem Fox, Paul Jennings, Gillian Rubinstein, and many others. From 1991 to 1992 he helped devise and design the puppets and visual world of Lift Off for the Australian Children's Television Foundation — a programme widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative children's television shows ever produced in Australia. His most celebrated chapter began in the late 1990s when he joined forces with author Andy Griffiths on the Just! books. Together they created the Treehouse series, starting with The 13-Storey Treehouse in 2011. The books sold more than 10 million copies in Australia alone, were published in over 30 countries, and won awards around the world including the Sainsbury's Children's Book Award (2015). It was a partnership that, as Griffiths put it, "supercharged our inner ten-year-olds." Terry worked from a studio at the bottom of his garden — a big room full of desks, paper, paints, pens, music, and a wood stove — and lived by the beach in Mornington, Victoria, with his wife Kristen. They had three children, Max, Imogen, and Eve, and five grandchildren, Georgia, Lucy, Charlie, Alfie, and Felix. He died on 21 September 2026, aged 76, surrounded by his family. His stories, his laughter, and his particular genius for making children feel capable of anything will endure for generations to come.