Meet the author

Davina Bell.

Writer · Australia

Davina Bell is an Australian author of warm, rhyming self-esteem picture books, including the award-winning All the Ways to be Smart, that gently widen what it means to be clever.

Davina Bell is an Australian children's author and publisher, born in Perth and now based in Melbourne, who trained in law before moving into writing and editing. She spent years as a children's editor at Penguin, working with authors including Mem Fox and Margaret Wild, and writes across picture books, junior and middle-grade fiction and young adult. Her picture books, among them Under the Love Umbrella and All the Ways to be Smart, are warm, rhyming and reassuring, gently widening what children are told they should be. All the Ways to be Smart, illustrated by Allison Colpoys, celebrates every kind of clever, from building boats out of boxes to simply being kind, and won the 2019 Australian Book Industry Award for best picture book. A dependable name for feel-good, self-esteem read-alouds and giftable classroom favourites.