Australian children’s author and illustrator Terry Denton, whose wonderfully chaotic drawings helped generations of children fall in love with books, has died aged 76.

Denton, best known for his extraordinary three-decade creative partnership with author Andy Griffiths, died on Monday surrounded by his family, according to his literary agency Curtis Brown and publisher Pan Macmillan.

For millions of Australian families, his name will forever be linked to the wildly successful Treehouse books, beginning with The 13-Storey Treehouse.

A partnership that became part of childhood

Griffiths and Denton began working together in the 1990s, going on to create the Just! books and the Treehouse phenomenon.

Griffiths paid tribute to his longtime friend and collaborator following news of his death, describing their decades of working and playing together as “an honour and a pure delight”.

Denton’s drawings were never simply decoration. They were jokes within jokes, packed with tiny details, strange creatures and visual gags that rewarded children for lingering over every page.

It was a formula that turned reluctant readers into enthusiastic ones and made their books fixtures in Australian homes, classrooms and libraries.

Much more than the Treehouse

Denton had already established himself as one of Australia’s leading children’s illustrators long before the Treehouse series became a publishing sensation.

His work included Gasp!, which was adapted for television, while his 1986 book Felix and Alexander won the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Picture Book of the Year.

Across his long career he also worked with some of Australia’s best-known children’s writers, including Mem Fox and Paul Jennings.

For many Starts at 60 readers, Denton’s legacy will be especially familiar.

We bought his books for our children, watched them disappear into his drawings, and then saw another generation of grandchildren discover the same mad humour.

Andy Griffiths supplied the words, but Terry Denton helped make that wonderfully ridiculous world visible and Australian childhood was a little more fun because he did.