Blackall started her career with various jobs, such as painting robotic characters for theme parks, and authoring a household hints column.[5] She also exhibited her paintings at galleries in Sydney and Melbourne.[5] While in Australia, she married and had two children.[6]
In 2000, she won the lottery for an immigration visa and moved her family to Brooklyn, New York, even though she had no certainty of employment.[3] She did various editorial work and did several animated commercials for the UK market.[3]
She began illustrating children's books in collaboration with writers. Her first illustrated book, Ruby’s Wish by Shirin Yim Bridges, won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award in 2003.[6] Eventually, she began writing children's books on her own, as well as continuing her collaborative work.
Her first book for adults, Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found (2011), was based on a blog for anonymous messages posted online by lovelorn strangers.[5] She did a series of paintings for the book, based on some of these messages, and also made a poster for the MTA Arts for Transit program, which was displayed in New York City subway cars the following year.[5]
Her 2015 collaboration with Emily Jenkins, A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat, was praised by reviewers but became the subject of controversy over its depiction of slavery.[7][8][9]
As of 2016[update], she has illustrated more than 30 books for children,[3][5][12] including the Ivy and Bean series. For this 10-volume series, she collaborated with author Annie Barrows via email. They did not meet in person until halfway through their work on the series.[13]
She hides an image of a whale in every book, in honor of the novel Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.[14][13] Blackall dislikes it when an author refers to an illustrated book as "my book", feeling it diminishes the essential role of the illustrations.[15]
She seriously injured her hand in a fall while working at a children's camp.[3] Rehabilitative physical therapy has only been partially successful; she may have to give up precision drawing, and change her creative methods.[3] She is working on converting a farmhouse in upstate New York into a retreat for writers and artists, and is thinking of doing more writing herself.[3]
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