Meet the Author: Ashleigh Barton
Ashleigh Barton is a prolific Australian writer for children, whose infectious enthusiasm for reading and creative expression makes her a hit with adults and children alike at schools and festivals. She enjoys inspiring young audiences to value books and to share their own stories by honing their writing skills. Ashleigh has written picture books, junior fiction and the lauded middle grade novel How To Sail to Somewhere. Her latest picture book is Hedgehog or Echidna? a witty showcase of animal information, illustrated by Amandine Thomas, now reviewed in StoryLinks. It highlights those creatures who are often mistaken for each other. Llama or alpaca? Rabbit or hare? How do you actually tell the difference?
Lara Cain Gray chatted to Ashleigh about the story behind this fresh presentation of fun facts!
This is such a fun way to explore the natural world. What inspired you to write about these similar-but-different animals?
Thank you! I always seem to get my ideas from random, everyday things and that’s exactly what happened here. A few years ago, when my little boy was still a toddler he had one of those alphabet toys with an alligator representing the letter A. He didn’t understand letters yet so he wouldn’t believe me that it was an alligator and not a crocodile. That got me thinking about other animals around the world that tend to get confused and I thought it would make a fun premise for a picture book.
The illustrations are wonderful. I love the endpapers! Did you collaborate at all with Amandine, or were the images a lovely surprise?
The images were a super lovely surprise! There wasn’t a lot of collaboration for this one at all. Because the text is conversation based and pretty self-explanatory, I didn’t even leave illustration notes. I’m a big believer in leaving illustrators to do their thing because they have their own set of skills and ways of looking at things and so, in my experience, trusting them to bring these talents to the story really pays off. Amandine did such a great job – she is the queen of animal illustrations! (I love the endpapers too – they are SO cute!)
You write for a range of different age groups. What do you enjoy – or find challenging – about writing picture books, compared with novels?
I love writing both novels and picture books but they definitely come with different sets of challenges. One of the most challenging parts of a picture book, for me, is developing a really solid idea that works in this short format. HEDGEHOG OR ECHIDNA hit me as a pretty formed idea that needed some research to pull together, but DINOSAUR IN MY POCKET, for example, came as an overall premise (a dinosaur in a little boy’s pocket – inspired by my baby’s onesie that had an illustrated dinosaur hanging out of the pocket) and it took a few years before I finally worked out exactly what that story was about (a boy who steals a miniature dinosaur and puts it in his pocket, which leads to the dinosaur growing bigger as his guilty conscience grows). I have a few other picture book ideas I’m sitting on that have a premise or end goal but I’m yet to figure out exactly how it’s going to work. I can’t write these until I know exactly what the story will be and sometimes it’s a bit of a waiting game because I don’t like to force it. It works this way for novels for me as well, but there are more plot lines and characters to work with so at least there are other places to get started if I haven’t figured it all out yet.
Can you recommend another book about animals (recent or one of your own childhood favourites) that readers of Hedgehog or Echidna might also enjoy?
There are so many amazing books about animals out there! A favourite in my household at the moment that features lots of different animals and points out their unique features is ‘Monkey Puzzle’ by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. When I was little, I remember loving a book my dad used to read me called ‘There’s a Train Going by My Window’ by Wendy Kesselman and Tony Chen which featured animals all around the world.
Hedgehog or Echidna? Animals who are the same…but different! is published by Hachette Australia, July 2025
Other books by Ashleigh Barton reviewed in StoryLinks include:
