Peter B. Cotton

Some people spend their lives doing one remarkable thing. Peter Cotton somehow found time to do several.

He grew up in Herefordshire, England, studied medicine at Cambridge University, and went on to become one of the most influential gastroenterologists of his generation. Over six decades he pioneered endoscopy procedures that changed how doctors around the world treat patients, trained physicians across more than fifty countries, gave lectures on every continent, and wrote the primary endoscopy textbook worldwide, Practical Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, now in its eighth edition and translated into eight languages including Chinese, Korean, Turkish and Portuguese. Not bad for someone who also finds time to write children's books about a snake.

But here is the thing about Peter Cotton. Long before the textbooks, the international conferences, the invited lectures and the medical breakthroughs, he was just a father sitting at the edge of a bed making up stories. The snake was called Fred. Fred had a habit of rushing across roads without looking, which is how he ended up squished by an ambulance and in need of some serious mending. His children loved it. Life moved on. Fred was forgotten.

Then the grandchildren arrived and asked a question that changed everything.

What ever happened to Fred-Fred?

Peter found his illustrator, the wonderfully talented Bonnie Lemaire, and Fred came back to life. That was the beginning of a children's book series that now spans ten books, each written in warm, witty, read aloud rhyme for children aged 4 to 8. Fred and his friends, including real family members Perdy and Jack, Connor and Ellie, have been to school, welcomed Jungle Jim, explored the beach, gone camping, toured Charleston, travelled the length and breadth of the United States from coast to coast, and most recently discovered the ancient legend of the Chinese Zodiac and the Great Race, a story rooted in Peter's own decades of travel, medical work and genuine friendship across China and Hong Kong.

The Fred the Snake series has earned six Mom's Choice Gold Awards, a 2026 International Impact Book Award, and a 2026 Mom's Choice Gold Award specifically recognising its celebration of Chinese culture and the Lunar New Year. Publications including Kirkus Reviews and The Children's Book Review have praised the series warmly, and reviewers around the world have compared Peter's writing to Lewis Carroll, Dr Seuss, Roald Dahl and Hilaire Belloc.

Parents, teachers, librarians and homeschool educators reach for these books when they are looking for multicultural children's books, Lunar New Year books for kids, Chinese Zodiac picture books for children, AAPI children's books, award winning read aloud books for ages 4 to 8, and funny rhyming children's picture books that blend cultural learning, friendship and humour into something a child will want read to them again and again.

Peter has also written his life down in two memoirs. The Tunnel at the End of the Light, published in 2011 and translated into Chinese with a celebrated author signing in Shanghai, follows his endoscopic journey across six remarkable decades of medicine, travel and discovery. Its sequel, Reflections: After Leaving the Tunnel, published in 2025, is a quieter, warmer book. The reflections of a man looking back at a life genuinely well lived, with all its adventures, friendships, discoveries and detours fully intact. Together they form a portrait of a career that touched patients, trained doctors and crossed continents, told in the honest, unhurried voice of someone who has earned the right to reflect.

He lives with his wife Marion on Dewees Island, South Carolina, surrounded by wildlife, family and the kind of peace that only comes after a very full life. He still travels, still lectures, still presents Fred at schools and libraries across the country, and in December 2026 he returns to Hong Kong to open the 40th anniversary of a medical conference he founded there with a Chinese colleague four decades ago. It is the kind of moment that reminds you that the best stories are always the ones still being written.

Fred would agree.