After leaving school, Moore took a variety of jobs. Raymond Briggs’s book Father Christmas (1973) inspired her to want to illustrate books, and she began to look for work as an illustrator.[2] An early work, Aktil’s Big Swim (1980), tells the story of a Dover mouse who decides to swim the English Channel, not understanding how wide it is.[3]
In the early 1980s, Moore returned to live in England, settling in Hampstead, while still working on picture books. Her Six-Dinner Sid (1990), an illustrated book for children about a cat, took six months to complete[2] and won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in the under-five category,[4] but during the recession of the early 1990s her flat was repossessed. This had a happy outcome, as Moore then found an apartment in a large but decaying Palladian house in a Gloucestershire village, with good light in a room she planned to use as a studio. Not far from the River Windrush, the countryside around the house inspired the illustrations for Moore’s edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, which went on to sell more than a million copies.[2] Her editions of other children’s classics include Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost.[5]
As of 2010, Moore was still living and working in Gloucestershire. Following her version of The Wind in the Willows, she is reported to be working on a sequel.[2]
