Acknowledgments

You might expect that putting together a third edition—and one where the main change consists of two new chapters—would be straightforward. Indeed, writing the “green field” content of chapters 15 and 16 was the easy part. But there’s a lot more to it than that—tweaking little bits of language throughout the rest of the book, checking for any aspects which were fine a few years ago but don’t quite make sense now, and generally making sure the whole book is up to the high standards I expect readers to hold it to. Fortunately, I have been lucky enough to have a great set of people supporting me and keeping the book on the straight and narrow.

Most importantly, my family have been as wonderful as ever. My wife Holly is a children’s author herself, so our kids are used to us having to lock ourselves away for a while to meet editorial deadlines, but they’ve remained cheerfully encouraging throughout. Holly herself takes all of this in stride, and I’m grateful that she’s never reminded me just how many books she’s started from scratch and completed in the time I’ve been working on this third edition.