Georgia Byng | |
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Born | Georgia Mary Byng [1] [a] 6 September 1965 [2] Chelsea, London, England |
Occupation |
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Education | Westonbirt School |
Alma mater | Central School of Speech and Drama |
Genre | |
Notable works | Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism (2002) |
Notable awards | Sheffield Children's Book Award Stockton Children's Book Award Salford Children's Book Award Massachusetts Children's Book Award |
Children | 3 |
Relatives |
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Lady Georgia Mary Caroline Byng [3] (born 6 September 1965) is a British children's writer, educator, illustrator, actress and film producer. Since 1995, she has published thirteen children's books, and co-written and co-produced one film. Byng has won the Stockton Children's Book Award, [4] the Sheffield Children's Book Award, [5] the Massachusetts Children's Book Award, [6] the Salford Children's Book Award and the Best Kid's Film at the Peace And Love Festival, Sweden. Most of Byng's books are magical realism adventures, with protagonists who overcome self-doubt and become self-empowered. The themes are often bullying and its darkness, kindness and its light, friendship and its warmth, and the power of the mind.
Georgia Byng was born on 6 September 1965, at her family's home in London, [2] the elder daughter and second child of Thomas Edmund Byng, Viscount Enfield (later the 8th Earl of Strafford) and his first wife, Jennifer May (daughter of Irish politician William Morrison May). She grew up in a village, Abbots Worthy, near the city of Winchester in Hampshire. She has three brothers and one sister. Byng is the elder sister of Jamie Byng, publisher of Canongate Books. [7] Through her late stepfather, Sir Christopher Bland, Byng is the half-sister of Archie Bland, Guardian writer and sub-editor. [8]
Byng was educated at Princess Mead School and Nethercliffe School, Winchester, then from the age of 12 at Westonbirt School, an independent boarding school for girls in Gloucestershire. [9] She went to Peter Symonds, a sixth-form college in Winchester. From 1984 to 1987, she attended the Central School of Speech and Drama, a constituent college of the University of London in central London. [7] [10]
Byng worked as an actress from 1989 to 1990, appearing in the television series Screen Two , Dealers , and Capstick's Law .
Byng's first published book was a comic-strip story that she wrote and illustraited – The Sock Monsters, about the small monsters who live in houses and eat people's socks. She followed this with Jack's Tree, a comic-strip book about a boy who saves a tree from being cut down. Her next book was The Ramsbottom Rumble, a short novel about two boys who save their grandmother from a con man. [11]
Byng's best-known work is Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism , a children's novel about a girl who finds a hypnotism book in the library and learns how to hypnotise people. This book was followed by Molly Moon’s Hypnotic Holiday, then Molly Moon Stops the World in which Molly learns how to stop time. In the next book, Molly Moon's Time Travel Adventure, Molly gets the gist of time travelling. In Molly Moon, Micky Minus and the Mind Machine she becomes a mind reader. In Molly Moon and the Morphing Mystery Molly uses her powers to morph into other forms, both people and animals. In the seventh Molly Moon book, Molly Moon and The Monster Music, Molly finds she is able to hypnotise people and animals by playing hypnotic music. Each of the Molly Moon series is set in a different place, from the UK to New York, to Los Angeles, then India (this one in the 19th century) to Switzerland in the future to Ecuador and Japan. Byng co-wrote the screenplay for Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism, the movie of her first book. [10]
After the Molly Moon books came Pancake Face, and The Girl with No Nose, and in January 2023, Albi, the Glowing Cow Boy, [12] an illustrated novel for 8- to 12-year-olds about a calf who eats big white milk mushrooms, then becomes super-intelligent and escapes an abattoir. Like Byng's other books, this book travels across the world. Its protagonist, Albi champions compassion towards other beings and plant-based eating and this being a solution to climate change. Byng is with Caradoc King and Millie Hoskins at London literary agency United Agents. [13]
In 2015, Byng was the producer for Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism , the film adaptation of her book. [10]
Byng married Daniel Chadwick in 1990; they divorced in 1995. They have a daughter.
Byng married artist Marc Quinn. They divorced in 2014. They have two sons. [14] [15] [16] [ citation needed ]
Byng is now engaged to musician, Guy Pratt.
Selected works include:
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention, reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.
Maid Marian and her Merry Men is a British children's television series created and written by Tony Robinson and directed by David Bell. It began in 1989 on BBC1 and ran for four series, with the last episode shown in 1994. The show was a partially musical comedy retelling of the legend of Robin Hood, placing Maid Marian in the role of leader of the Merry Men, and reducing Robin to an 'incompetent' ex-tailor.
James Braid was a Scottish surgeon, natural philosopher, and "gentleman scientist".
Jean Carolyn Craighead George was an American writer of more than one hundred books for children and young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves and Newbery runner-up My Side of the Mountain. Common themes in George's works are the environment and the natural world. Beside children's fiction, she wrote at least two guides to cooking with wild foods and one autobiography published 30 years before her death, Journey Inward.
Malorie Blackman is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues, for example, her Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional alternative Britain to explore racism. Blackman has been the recipient of many honours for her work, including the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize.
Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism is a 2002 children's novel by British author Georgia Byng. It is the first instalment in the Molly Moon six-book series. Amber Entertainment and Lipsync Productions produced a film adaptation, Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism, which was released on April 11, 2015.
Molly Moon Stops the World is a 2003 children's novel by British author Georgia Byng. It is the second instalment in the Molly Moon six-book series.
Laura Joffe Numeroff is an American author and illustrator of children's books who is best known as the author of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
Catherine Johnson FRSL is a British author and screenwriter. She has written several young adult novels and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2004 drama film Bullet Boy.
Molly Garrett Bang is an American illustrator. For her illustration of children's books she has been a runner-up for the American Caldecott Medal three times and for the British Greenaway Medal once. Announced June 2015, her 1996 picture book Goose is the 2016 Phoenix Picture Book Award winner – that is, named by the Children's Literature Association the best English-language children's picture book that did not win a major award when it was published twenty years earlier.
Siobhan Dowd was a British writer and activist. The last book she completed, Bog Child, posthumously won the 2009 Carnegie Medal from the professional librarians, recognising the year's best book for children or young adults published in the UK.
Marcus Sedgwick was a British writer and illustrator. He authored several young adult and children's books and picture books, a work of nonfiction and several novels for adults, and illustrated a collection of myths and a book of folk tales for adults. According to School Library Journal his "most acclaimed titles" were those for young adults.
Ileen Maisel was an American-born film producer, living in the United Kingdom. In 2009, she was one of the founders of Amber Entertainment. Previously, she was Senior Vice President of European Production for New Line Cinema. She was nominated for the 1999 Alexander Korda Award for BAFTA Award for Best Film for Onegin. She died in London on February 16, 2024, at the age of 68.
For over a century, hypnosis has been a popular theme in fiction – literature, film, and television. It features in movies almost from their inception and more recently has been depicted in television and online media. As Harvard hypnotherapist Deirdre Barrett points out in 'Hypnosis in Popular Media', the vast majority of these depictions are negative stereotypes of either control for criminal profit and murder or as a method of seduction. Others depict hypnosis as all-powerful or even a path to supernatural powers.
Andrew James Hartley is a British-born American novelist, who writes fiction for children and adults. He also writes thrillers as Andrew Hart.
James Edmund Byng is a British publisher. He works for the independent publishing firm Canongate Books, where he is the CEO and publisher.
Raffey Camomile Cassidy is a British actress. She first appeared as a child actress in the television movie Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen (2009), adding her first brief film role in Dark Shadows (2012), her first main cast television role in 32 Brinkburn Street (2011), and main cast film role in Tomorrowland (2015). She followed this with a dual role in director Brady Corbet's Vox Lux (2018) and her first top billing in The Other Lamb (2019). She had a supporting role in the 2024 drama film The Brutalist, also directed by Corbet—which won the prestigious Silver Lion at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism is a 2015 British fantasy film directed by Christopher N. Rowley and starring Dominic Monaghan, Lesley Manville, Emily Watson, Joan Collins and Raffey Cassidy. It is based on Georgia Byng's 2002 novel Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism.
Janice Marriott is a writer, editor, audio producer, screenwriter, creative writing tutor and mentor, manuscript assessor, poet and gardener. Several of her books have been shortlisted for or won awards and she has also been the recipient of a number of writing residencies, as well as the prestigious Margaret Mahy Medal in 2018. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
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