Susan Mary Cooper is an English author of children's books. She is best known for The Dark Is Rising, a contemporary fantasy series set in England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology such as the Arthurian legends and Welsh folk heroes. For that work, in 2012 she won the lifetime Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, recognizing her contribution to writing for teens. In the 1970s two of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Welsh background" by the Welsh Books Council.
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader.
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images. The images in picture books can be produced in a range of media, such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil. Picture books often serve as pedagogical resources, aiding with children's language development or understanding of the world.
Jackanory is a BBC children's television series which was originally broadcast between 1965 and 1996. It was designed to stimulate an interest in reading. The show was first transmitted on 13 December 1965, and the first story was the fairy-tale "Cap-o'-Rushes" read by Lee Montague. Jackanory continued to be broadcast until 1996, with around 3,500 episodes in its 30-year run. The final story, The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne, was read by Alan Bennett and broadcast on 24 March 1996. The show was briefly revived on 27 November 2006 for two one-off stories, and the format was revived as Jackanory Junior on CBeebies between 2007 and 2009.
Cliff Wright is an artist, book illustrator and advertising artist.
Hamish Vigne Christie "Korky" Paul is a British illustrator of children's books. He was born and raised in Rhodesia, but now lives in Oxford, England. His work, characteristically executed with bright watercolour paint and pen and ink, is recognisable by an anarchic yet detailed style and for its "wild characterisation". He is most known for his illustration of the series Winnie the Witch.
Robert Allen Fitzwilliam Gillmor MBE was a British ornithologist, artist, illustrator, author, and editor. He was a co-founder of the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) and was its secretary, chairman and president. He contributed to over 100 books, and received numerous awards.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an English screenwriter, novelist and occasional actor, known for his children's fiction and for his collaborations with film director Michael Winterbottom. He has achieved fame as the writer for the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony and for sequels to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car, a children's classic by Ian Fleming.
Julia Catherine Donaldson is an English writer and playwright, and the 2011–2013 Children's Laureate. She is best known for her popular rhyming stories for children, especially those illustrated by Axel Scheffler, which include The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom and Stick Man. She originally wrote songs for children's television but has concentrated on writing books since the words of one of her songs, "A Squash and a Squeeze", were made into a children's book in 1993. Of her 184 published works, 64 are widely available in bookshops. The remaining 120 are intended for school use and include her Songbirds phonic reading scheme, which is part of the Oxford University Press's Oxford Reading Tree.
Michael Wayne Rosen is a British children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster and activist who has written 140 books. He served as Children's Laureate from 2007 to 2009.
Aidan Chambers is a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for Postcards from No Man's Land (1999). For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.
Denys James Watkins-Pitchford MBE was a British naturalist, an illustrator, art teacher and a children's author under the pseudonym "BB". He won the 1942 Carnegie Medal for British children's books.
The Magic Key is a British educational animated television series based on the "Biff, Chip and Kipper" stories from the Oxford Reading Tree published by Oxford University Press, originally written by Roderick Hunt and illustrated by Alex Brychta. The series is a co-production between Collingwood O'Hare Entertainment Limited and HIT Entertainment, in association with the BBC and aired within the BBC Schools strand on BBC Two from 2000 until 2001.
John Dougherty is a Northern Irish children's writer, born in the town of Larne in 1964. He now lives in Gloucestershire.
Alex Alphonso Wheatle MBE is a British novelist, who was sentenced to a term of imprisonment after the 1981 Brixton riot in London.
Roderick James Hunt is a British children's author. His most famous series of stories is The Magic Key, which was first written as a part of the Oxford Reading Tree in 1985 and illustrated by Alex Brychta MBE. There were originally 30 stories, and there are now over 400.
BookTrust is a UK children's reading charity dedicated to getting children reading.
Anthony John McGowan is an English author of books for children, teenagers and adults. He is the winner of the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Lark.
Shoo Rayner is a British children's author and illustrator. He was born Hugh Rayner to a Norwegian mother and a British father.
The Oxford Reading Tree is a series of books published by Oxford University Press, for teaching children to read using phonics. The series contains over 800 books.
