I’m Phil Kettle and I’m an author. I spend a lot of my time writing books for children and visiting schools to talk about reading and writing.

The first series of books I wrote was the TOOCOOL series. There were eight books in Series 1, another eight books in Series 2, and then another eight books in the third series. I got sick of the number eight and I wrote ten books for Series 4. That makes 34 TOOCOOL books! I hope you’ve read them all.

Every time I finished a TOOCOOL story with Spike, Wong and MARCY, there was this voice that seemed to follow me around.

“Hello … Mr Kettle. Are you there? Are you listening to me? Hello … Is there anyone there?... Come on Mr Kettle - it’s MY turn for a book series - me MARCY! … Hello …”  Sure enough MARCY now has her own series of ten books. I hope you have read them too!

There are also 36 BOYZ RULE books and 24 GIRLZ ROCK books. And of course there are eight books in the BILLY KOOL series also.

Recently I launched ten new books called GET REAL – I’m sure you’ll laugh until your tummy hurts reading about Harry and Jesse and their wonderful time machine in the GET REAL series.

I have also had a great time over the last few months writing a new series called OUR AUSTRALIA for Australian Geographic. There are eight books to be launched in 2010, eight books to be launched in 2011 and eight books to be launched in 2012. Each book is a journey of discovery and as Taha and his mum explore special places you know by name, they provide you with an opportunity to feel like you too are visiting and getting to know OUR AUSTRALIA.

I was born in Mildura, which is in northern Victoria. I grew up on a farm a few kilometers away from Mildura, in a small town called Cardross. This town was so tiny there was only one shop, one garage, one school and a town hall. Our post office address was PO Box 1 and our telephone number was 12.

I lived on the farm with my mum, dad, brother, sister, and labrador dog called Skipper. I really enjoyed living on the farm. There was always plenty to do, plenty to eat, and time for lots of adventures. The farm was a place where I could use my imagination all day, every day. It was where I first started to create my stories.

My favourite subject at school was sport, then more sport. I really loved football and cricket. Actually I loved any sport where you could hit, kick or throw something. I also really loved reading and writing.

These days I live in Melbourne - the best city in the world. I have a pet spider that lives in the corner of the garage and two fluffy white dogs (well sometimes they’re white). I test all my stories out on the wildlife that I live with!

That’s all from me. But I do hope that you have as much fun reading my books, as I had writing them.

Bye for now.
PHIL KETTLE