Hiawyn Oram grew up in South Africa. After graduating in English and Drama from the University of Kwa Zulu Natal, she worked as an advertising copywriter before becoming a full-time writer. She's written more than a 100 children's books starting with the old classic ANGRY ARTHUR Illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura, now an ebook by MEBOOKS. Her work has been published in more than 30 languages including Russian and Chinese, Turkish, Slovak and Polish and won or been short-listed for several awards.
She also writes poetry, script and lyrics for musicals and has developed and written for animated TV. Dreamworks in the US have optioned her series starring Rumblewick, an overworked cat to a reluctant witch, as the inspiration for an animated movie. THE VACKEES, a musical for which she wrote the words, is regularly performed across the country and LAST TRAIN TO TOMORROW, about the rescue of 10, 000 Jewish children from the holocaust, was performed by the Halle Orchestra, junior choir and actors to standing ovation.
Her favourite children's book ever is THE SECRET GARDEN by F. H. Burnett and her vote for best children's movie goes to Disney's JUNGLE BOOK, narrowly pipping KUNG FU PANDA to the post. Hiawyn lives in London where, when not writing, she can be found inventing games for grandchildren and getting messy covering canvasses in paint.
David Melling has been shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal, the Smarties Book Award and the Independent Booksellers Award.
His Hugless Douglas books have sold over 2 million copies worldwide, and the loveable brown bear has starred in a World Book Day book as well as his own theatre show. Before becoming an internationally acclaimed author-illustrator, David worked as an animation artist for films including the much-loved Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs. One of his most popular picture books The Tale of Jack Frost was animated and shown on BBC1 on Christmas Day.
