Originally created the Mr. Men books in 1971 when his son Adam Hargreaves asked
him "what a tickle looks like". Adam, now an adult has since taken over
writing the books.
At the time of his death in 1988 he had sold an estimated 85 million
books (translated into fifteen languages) in twenty-two countries.
After J.K. Rowling, Hargreaves is (posthumously) the best-selling author of children's books in the U.K., selling an average of one of his "Mr. Men" series of books every 27 seconds over the past decade.