AustLit

An illustrator of numerous children's books, Margaret Power won a four year scholarship to study illustration at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She worked for an advertising agency before travelling overseas in 1966. She lived in London and Amsterdam for ten years where she worked as a fashion and product designer in department stores, before returning to Australia in 1976. She initially continued to work in advertising, specialising in storyboard and fashion illustration, and also illustrated stories for New Idea magazine and reading scheme and mathematics books. Her first picture book commission was for the successful Creatures in the Beard and The Long Red Scarf.

Power co-authored, with Calvin J. Irons (q.v.), the children's educational readers Baker Bill, Everything Half Price: A Story About Halving Patterns (1999) and Miss Gobbledegook: A Story About Multiplication and Division (1999).

Power's animal illustrations in children's books are the result of extensive research, and a process of redrawing from the initial roughs, using different media and colours to establish accuracy.