Born in Perth, Western Australia, Mel Tregonning was a published cartoonist since primary school and began a long-running comic strip in a national magazine at 16. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design at Curtin University and won the international Illustrators of the Future competition in 2006. She was an in-house illustrator for RIC Publications before taking time to work on her graphic picture book Small Things. Sadly, Mel passed away in 2014, leaving an incredible body of work