More than 3,000 people – as an audience for a film's opening weekend, that number would be considered a disaster.

As the figure for the audience of an art exhibition's opening weekend, it is phenomenal.

But then seeing that kind of record figure go into a gallery to see her work is just another chapter in the extraordinary story of Lauren Child. The 3,000 people who were drawn to Sheffield's Weston Park Museum were queuing up to see the creations of the author and illustrator.

The museum's new exhibition, which runs until February next year, is Green Drops and Moonsquirters: The Utterly Imaginative World of Lauren Child.

Millions are already familiar with Child's work, thanks to her creations Charlie and Lola going on to become the stars of both BBC television and the Disney channel.

For the past decade she has also been captivating children and their parents with her best-selling books which include the hugely successful Charlie and Lola as well as Clarice Bean, That Pesky Rat and Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent.

Green Drops and Moonsquirters is the first exhibition to bring Lauren Child's popular books to life.

What was it like for Child to come face to face with her creations in a gallery setting, to walk through a world that she created in her imagination and forged with pen and paper?

"Well, I'm actually sitting here in the studio, looking at
lots of the characters right now," she says.

"So it's something I'm very used to – I always have them here watching while I'm writing." Introduced to art as a youngster by her art teacher father and to literature by her primary school teacher mother, Child says as a youngster her life was surrounded by art and literature, so it was hardly a surprise when she decide to pursue a career in art.

After training at Manchester Polytechnic and the City and Guilds of London Art School, Child found herself fallen on hard times.

"It's something that happens to so many people, you can get yourself into a mess so easily," she says.

"I didn't have anywhere to stay and would sleep on friends' sofas and move around. Trying to get work was really hard. I was fortunate not to find myself in any really dangerous situations, but living in that way is quite emotionally destructive. You start to feel like people must be getting fed up of you and that kind of paralyses you."

During this time she would occasionally find work, and sometimes it was work involved in the art world – she was one of the artists who worked on the famous Spot series of paintings by Damien Hirst. All the while she was also working on an idea for a children's book about a girl called Clarice Bean.

"I woke up on my birthday – it was a very significant birthday – and I was sleeping in a bed with my best friend because I had nowhere else to go," she says.

"I lay there thinking about how when I was younger I thought I would have my life organised, with a house and a job when I was in my late twenties. I realised I couldn't find myself in the same position at my next birthday, I had to do anything to make sure that didn't happen."

Child had been working on an idea for an illustrated children's book for a number of years, but had constantly reworked the stories and the illustrations to fit any piece of advice she was given.

On the significant birthday (her 30th) she decided to stop listening to all the ideas other people were giving her for her book. She says: "I started to trust in my own idea and trust that I knew the character and what I wanted to do better than anyone else."

After five years of hard work her book, Clarice Bean, That's Me, was taken on by a publisher.

"It was the best I could do. I knew that I had created the best work of art I could and if that wasn't good enough, then I didn't know what I was going to do."

Fortunately, it was good enough for Orchard to take on the book and pay Child £5,000, an amount which seemed incredible at the time. The book was published in 1999, but Child kept her job as a receptionist for a further five years, the memories of her times living in penury a reminder that the life of an artist is not financially secure.

More books followed and awards came Child's way, the strength of both her storytelling and illustration making a potent combination and she was finally able to let go of her job and accept her success.

"I have always admired Quentin Blake and particularly the way he takes a text of a story and goes beyond it with his illustrations," says Child.

"If you can't make more of the text with an illustration, then there's no need for it."

Green Drops and Moonsquirters: The Utterly Imaginative World of Lauren Child is at Weston Park Museum until February 15.