[1] She worked for 15 years for Vogue as production director on books on crochet, knitting and dressmaking.

[1] She won the 1988 Kate Greenaway Medal, awarded by the then Library Association (now CILIP) for "distinguished illustration in a book for children", for her work on Martin Waddell's Can't You Sleep Little Bear?

(Walker, ISBN 1844284913),[5] which has been called "as perfect a picture-book as anyone could hope to make".

[6] She illustrated four further Little Bear books by Waddell, and his The Park in the Dark which won the 1989 Kurt Maschler Award.

[1] Barbara Firth lived much of her life in Harrow, with her sister Betty.