Children's book author and illustrator Georgie Ripper is about to publish eight new titles.

GEORGIE RIPPER must spend half the day pinching herself. She entered two children's books she was illustrating and writing as part of her arts degree final into the prestigious Macmillan Illustration competition and won.

So she left college with a contract from Macmillan to publish both books, and on the books of one of the UK's leading literary agents, without ever having to seek a commission.

That was last year. This month the 25-year-old sees the publication of not one but eight books My Best Friend Bob, the book that actually won the prize, devised, written and illustrated by her, and a set of seven Rainbow Magic Fairy books published by Orchard. Georgie drew the delicious streetwise fairies.

"I was just very lucky because it is an incredibly difficult field to break into. If you want to do children's books, the Macmillan prize is like the Holy Grail," she said. "Otherwise, I'd have been like everyone else sending my books off to publishers, and they get sent so much stuff."

My Best Friend Bob is a cosy tale of two little guinea pigs living happily together in Pete's Pet Palace until one of them is bought and the chums pine for each other. Naturally, it has a happy ending. But it is Georgie's gorgeous larger-than-life pictures that really make the book.

"I think I'm at my most confident doing small, furry animals," she confided. But her first book published by Macmillan (the other she entered in the competition) was about a very different small furry animal.

Little Brown Bushrat was one of the creatures encountered in the Australian jungle by the contestants in I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Wayne Sleep had them cascading all over his head, you may recall.

Georgie thinks the series was unfair to bushrats. "They portrayed them like critters, along with eels, snakes and spiders," she said.

"My mum's Australian and we've got lots of books with Australian animals, and I thought they'd be a bit different. I was going to do it about a wombat but then I decided I'd choose a scruffy sort of creature that didn't look like it could do anything."

And alongside his other 18 bushmates from kangaroo to koala he didn't shine other animals could jump the highest, run and swim the fastest, while he was too small and scrawny until a bush fire breaks out and he emerges as the Phil Tufnell.

Described by one reviewer as "exuberant and warm", Georgie's animal pictures are a joy, creating a magical world for the very young. She says she especially enjoyed being able to pile on the colour creativity that extends to the pink streaks in her dark hair. It's the words, not the pictures, that tie her in knots.

"I don't know how I think of the stories. Writing doesn't come naturally, the pictures are easy but the ideas are so hard to come by.

"In a 12 double-page picture book with under 600 words you'd think 'How hard can it be?' but I'd challenge anyone to come up with a story."

She thought she had, sending an outline and sketches about a rabbit called Mitchell to Macmillan for the next in the series. But bunnies, they said, are pass and have demanded frisky puppies instead.

So Georgie can't use her own pet, a shy cat called Rocky, as a model. But she can draw inspiration from the other job she still does to fill in the gaps between book contracts dog walking.

"I started three years ago for a company called Pet Relief, a lovely couple in Hemel Hempstead, who organise dog walking all around the area. It's a great job because I can pootle round Clarence Park or Verulamium Park with the dogs, and it gets me away from the drawing board," said Georgie. Her other part-time "earner" is face painting children at Cannons gym.

Georgie Ripper is such a great name for a children's author I thought she'd made it up. But it's her real name, Georgina Ripper.

She lives with her mother and two younger sisters, Annabel, 24, and Holly, 21, in a house near the city centre, and went to St Albans Girls' School, then the sixth form at St Albans School to do her "A" levels, before a foundation year at Manchester Metropolitan, followed by a degree in illustration at Anglia Polytechnic in Cambridge.

She has just run the London Marathon, achieving her goal of finishing in under four hours by 50 seconds, and raising over £1,000 for Bristol Cancer Help Centre. She chose a cancer charity as a tribute to the courage of a relative who was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph glands three years ago but has made a full recovery.

So far Georgie has produced picture books aimed at three to seven-year-olds, the older ones able to read the stories themselves. An admirer of JK Rowling, at some point she'd like to move on to the next age group and create more complex, imaginative books, though that could be a challenge in more ways than one.

"Any publisher has to take into account the American market because print runs in this country are so small. But the constraints over there are just ridiculous for instance, you're not allowed to show old ladies with cats or young children misbehaving because they say that's stereotyping. One author pulled out because she was ordered to show a granny jogging and JK Rowling was accused of some by encouraging children to take up witchcraft."

Meanwhile she has an appreciative readership over here and at least one fan. She got a letter from a man in Devon saying how much his seven-year-old son had enjoyed Little Brown Bushrat, so she sent the boy a hand made birthday card with an original painting on it.

"I can't afford to alienate my only fan," said Georgie.

My Best Friend Bob by Georgie Ripper is published by Macmillan Children's Books price £9.99.