CHILDREN'S author Angela McAllister had a strong feeling of dj vu on the drive down the M3 to meet her prospective father-in-law.

She'd lived in Fordingbridge as a child and attended La Retraite School in Salisbury, moving to London after university.

There she'd met Mark Farmer and it never occurred to her to ask where his family lived.

"We got to Salisbury, then to Fordingbridge," she says in disbelief.

"I had no idea he'd lived down here."

Now Angela (44), Mark and their two young children, Luke (9) and Eleanor (6), live in Mark's family home in Martin, just a few miles from where Angela lived as a child.

From here, she produces around 20 stories for children a year ranging from charmingly illustrated stories for very young children to tales for confident readers and novels for pre-teens.

But look back over publishers' lists and you will also find her credits as an illustrator, notably of some of Delia Smith's early cookbooks.

She was a nanny, until a journalist friend, Sue Carpenter asked her to illustrate a book she was writing called the Good Wedding Guide.

She gave up nannying as more illustrating work came in.

"Illustrating children's book seemed a natural thing to do, a lovely comfortable thing to do," she says.

"But one of my publishers said they had plenty of artists, what they needed was writers."

She has now authored more than 50 books, including five published this autumn, including Harry's Box about the marvellous places that young Harry goes with the help of an old cardboard box and his imagination, and Blue Rabbit who is left home alone with the other toys when his Boy goes on holiday.

We meet in Rockbourne for lunch just before she is due at Western Downland Primary School to talk to the children about her books and the process of writing.

She likes to show them how she works and let them see how many times she crosses out and starts again, or changes things slightly to improve them because she thinks it's important that children understand that it doesn't have to be perfect straight away.

She also values enormously the feedback she gets from them.

"It's crucial to be involved with contemporary children," she says firmly.

"There is a danger of writing for the child you were - it's a great mistake to write with echoes of your own childhood."

Illustrated books are expensive to produce, so all her books are pre-sold to America to make them viable, which leads to strange transatlantic conversations about what squirrels say and what foxes wear.

Ideas can come from out of nowhere, she says.

"I heard Eddie George, who was then chairman of the bank of England, talking about an elephant in the rowboat," she says.

"It was a real gift, but it took six months of mulling around before the story came."

Currently she is writing an undersea fantasy adventure provisionally titled The Last Moonfluke.

"I like to be excited by what I do," she says.

"There's a whole landscape to be explored - I've wanted to write this for years."

Harry's Box (illus. Jenny Jones), Blue Rabbit (illus. Jason Cockcroft and The Baddies' Goodies (illus. Sally Anne Lambert) are all published by Bloomsbury; Found You, Little Wombat (illus. Charles Fuge) and Little Jack Rabbit (illus. Sue Porter) are published by Gullane Childrens Books. - Lesley Bates