Wolf proves he's not as scary as he seems by taking everyone off for tea. Everything in Fanelli's collages has had a previous life. Sweet papers are crinkled and torn, newsprint is yellowed: every mark, every stain has its own story to tell
Illustration: Heinemann Photograph: Test/Action images
Fanelli's favoured medium is collage, which she has developed in a very personal way. She took it up not just as a way of moving on from the flat colours she'd always used in her paintings, but also to make use of a vast collection of bits and pieces
Illustration: Heinemann Photograph: Test/Action images
Dreamers Zeno, Bubu and Bird are reassured by Moon that the strange monster is only a lost pet, who needs their help
Illustration: Heinemann Photograph: Test/Action images
In this eccentric masterpiece the diary extracts are written by a girl, a chair, a firefly, a dog and a knife and fork. It celebrates the art of handwriting, emphasising its close relationship with drawing, scribbling and doodling
Illustration: Walker Books Photograph: Test/Action images
With off-beat humour and an inventive approach to everything from page design and typography to choice of materials, Fanelli's work is closer to Czech or German traditions than to British ones
Illustration: Walker Books Photograph: Test/Action images
Drawing is central to Fanelli's work and here it's done with a brush: "It's bolder than a pen and I like to allow the mark itself to suggest the direction the drawing should take; but it's only when you have control over the drawing that you can let it have that freedom"
Illustration: Faber Photograph: Test/Action images
Fanelli is influenced by the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, along with the American graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here, the illustrations look like doodles but precisely follow the poem
Illustration: Faber Photograph: Test/Action images
Fanelli sees the book as a tactile three-dimensional object and tries to put every element of it to work - here, a tiny insect is repeated in the bottom left-hand corner of each page to make a little "flicker book", which moves when you flick the pages
Illustration: Random House Photograph: Test/Action images
With parents involved in the world of art history, Fanelli grew up familiar with unusual books and was intrigued by the artists of the Russian avant-garde. She grew up in Italy but opted to study in England where, she says, "I felt I would be free to focus on an experimental approach"
Illustration: Walker Books Photograph: Test/Action images
Fanelli has always rejected the conventional approach to illustration, lettering and page design. The 14 ancient Greek monsters in this hugely energetic retelling roar, hiss and writhe out of the page
Illustration: Sara Fanelli/ Walker Books Photograph: Sara Fanelli/Action images
Collage, like puppetry, involves a lot of moving parts. Here, Pinocchio makes a break for freedom. Fanelli invests her gloriously coloured retelling with a witty sense of street theatre
Illustration: Walker Books Photograph: Test/Action images
In the foreground the fox and the cat, cut from murky, mottled paper and fly-blown parchment, are deliciously sinister
Illustration: Walker Books Photograph: Test/Walker Books
Pinocchio meets a dead girl who is waiting for a hearse to take her away. "I felt I could bring a certain lightness and a dream-like quality to the darker areas of the story," Fanelli says
Illustration: Walker Books Photograph: Test/Action images
Scribbles occur throughout Fanelli's books – urgent, angry scribbles, quiet fluffy scribbles, rhythmic scribbles and wanton, loopy scribbles. She says scribble is "alive ... it generates a sense of energy on the page"
Illustration: Tate Photograph: Test/Action images
Fanelli departed from her previous work to create this art book for adults which gave a new life to famous quotes using printmaking, three-dimensional models and onion juice
Illustration: Tate Photograph: Action images
