Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925 and moved to England with her father when the Nazis came into power. Ibbotson wrote more than twenty books for children and young adults, many of which garnered nominations for major awards for children's literature in the UK, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the Whitbread Prize. Eva's critically acclaimed Journey to the River Sea won the Smarties Gold Medal in 2001.
Set in the Amazon, it was written in honour of her deceased husband Alan, a former naturalist. Imaginative and humorous, Eva's books often convey her love of nature, in particular the Austrian countryside, which is evident in works such as The Star Of Kazan and A Song For Summer. Eva passed away at her home in Newcastle on October 20th 2010. Her final book, One Dog and His Boy, was published in May 2011.
A former broadcast journalist, Downing Street political adviser and government speechwriter, Joanna Nadin is the author of more than eighty books for children and teenagers, including the Flying Fergus series with Sir Chris Hoy, the bestselling Rachel Riley diaries, based on the author's teenage years, and the Carnegie Medal-nominated Joe All Alone, which is now a BAFTA-winning BBC drama.
She is also a lecturer on the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Joanna has written three novels for adults: The Double Life of Daisy Hemmings, The Talk of Pram Town, and The Queen of Bloody Everything.
