Rachel van Kooij was born in the Dutch city of Wageningen in 1968. She moved to Austria at the age of 10, and later studied Special Needs Teaching at Vienna University. She now lives in Klosterneuburg near Vienna and works with handicapped people. The last time we talked to her she was up a tree (it was a mobile phone conversation), surrounded by a bunch of kids. She was teaching them tree-climbing (we think). She has written several children's books, for both younger kids and older ones. She says of herself: `I write about the things I like to read about.' Her book Battolome is Little Island's most international book: written in German by a Dutch Austrian, set in Spain, translated into English and published in Ireland.