External links
- Official website
- Joyce Dunbar at Library of Congress , with 43library catalogue records
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Joyce Dunbar | |
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| Born | 6 January 1944 Scunthorpe, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Genre | Children's books |
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| joycedunbar | |
Joyce Dunbar (born 6 January 1944) [1] is an English writer. She primarily writes books for children, and has published over seventy books. [2] Dunbar is perhaps best known for Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Sleep, This Is The Star, and the Mouse and Mole series. [2] She is the mother of the children's writer-illustrator Polly Dunbar.
Dunbar was born in 1944 in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and is one of four children. [3] [4] Her father was a steel-worker and her mother was a fishing net maker. [3] She grew up in Lincolnshire. [5]
Dunbar attended Goldsmiths College in London, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English.[ citation needed ] After that, she did several jobs, working as a nanny, a waitress, a barmaid, and a salesperson. [3] In 1968, she started working as a teacher in a college drama department of Stratford-on-Avon, England.[ citation needed ] However, due to her gradual loss of hearing,[ citation needed ] Dunbar had to stop her teaching career and in 1989, she became a full-time writer. [2]
Dunbar has two grown up children: Ben, a fashion photographer and Polly, an author illustrator. [2] [6] Dunbar currently lives in Norwich. [5]
Dunbar published her first children's book at age 35. [5] In 1985, Dunbar published Mundo and the Weather-Child – a novel about the imaginary friend of a deaf child, which helped her become a runner up for the Guardian Fiction Award.[ citation needed ] In 1990, her book A Bun for Barney was made into an interactive video game by BBC Multimedia Corporation.[ citation needed ]
In 1998, she wrote Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Sleep, which is recommended as a book to help children feel secure. In 2002 Dunbar did a book tour in the United States to promote this book. [2] Her 2005 picture book Shoe Baby, illustrated by her daughter Polly, was made into a puppet show and is part of the 2006 Brighton Festival. [2]
Dunbar most well-known series, Mouse and Mole (illustrated by James Mayhew), has been adapted into a 26-part television animation series by Grasshopper Productions, with voices lent by Alan Bennett and Richard Briers. [2] [7]
Being a deaf person, [8] [9] Dunbar has participated in a number of campaigns on behalf of deaf people. In 1998, Dunbar cycled across Cuba in order to raise funds for the National Deaf Children's Society. [3] [7] Her journal Cycle Cuba, a record of this event, was published in 1999. [2] That same year, she had a trip to the Himalayas in support of the founding of a new ashram. [3] Dunbar has also taught English writing for children from Greek island Skyros. [7]
Dunbar is on the steering group for the Picture project run by SCOPE, which is about the representation of children with disability in picture books. [10]
Corgi Pups Collection (illustrated by Alison de Verde)
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