Kjartan Poskitt (born 15 May 1956 in York) is a British writer and TV presenter who is best known for writing the Murderous Maths children's series of books. [1]
Kjartan Poskitt (born 15 May 1956 in York) is a British writer and TV presenter who is best known for writing the Murderous Maths children's series of books. [1]
Poskitt was born in York, England, grew up in Selby, Yorkshire [2] and was educated at the Selby Abbey School, [2] at Terrington Hall, North Yorkshire, [3] and at Bootham School, York, [4] before studying engineering at Collingwood College, Durham University. [2]
Poskitt was a member of a comedy group while at Durham University, and toured with it to the US in 1979, playing the piano and singing, performing skits and doing a ventriloquist act with a dummy which wouldn't speak. [5] He participated in the National Student Drama Festival from 1976-1980, [6] and also performed solo at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from 1979 [7] to 1981. [2] [8] He was a member of the pop group Candlewick Green in the early 1980s. [9]
He has written and directed a number of pantomimes performed by the National Student Theatre Company, including Jack and the Beanstalk (1979), [7] The Sleeping Beauty (1980), [10] Cinderella (1981), Jack and the Beanstalk (1983), [11] as well as a nativity play, The Road to Bethlehem (1980), [12] and a "musical ghost pantomime", Sammy's Magic Garden (1985).
Early children's television appearances included Swap Shop during its Edinburgh Festival broadcasts, [2] and ITV Yorkshire's Behind the Bike Sheds. [6]
In addition to his science and maths books, which include books on Isaac Newton (Dead Famous: Isaac Newton and his Apple), and various galaxy puzzles, practical jokes and secret codes, Poskitt has written a book of magical tricks (Magic Tricks with Underpants, Scholastic 2004), [13] a GCSE Maths support book and four Rosie and Jim annuals. In 2007, Poskitt published the first in a series of children's novels called Urgum the Axeman. [14] Since then he has written the "Borgon the Axeboy" series and the award winning "Agatha Parrot" series. [15] [16]
He also wrote the theme tune for the children's art program SMart , as well as the title theme and music for the first two series of Brum . He is also the creator of a logic puzzle, Kjarposko. [14]
He has been a presenter for a number of (mostly BBC) educational children's TV shows. [14]
Captain Underpants is an illustrated children's graphic novel series by American author and illustrator Dav Pilkey. The series revolves around two fourth graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, living in Piqua, Ohio, and Captain Underpants, an aptly named superhero from one of the boys' homemade comic books, who accidentally becomes real when George and Harold hypnotize their cruel, bossy, and ill-tempered principal, Mr. Krupp. From the third book onwards, Mr. Krupp also possesses superhuman strength, durability and flight as a result of drinking alien "Extra-Strength Super Power Juice". Currently, the series includes 12 books, two activity books, colored versions, 15 spin-offs, and won a Kids' Choice Award on April 4, 2006. As of 2014, the series has been translated into more than 20 languages, with more than 80 million books sold worldwide, including over 50 million in the United States. DreamWorks Animation acquired the rights to the series to make an animated feature film adaptation, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, which was released on June 2, 2017, to positive reviews, followed by a television series, The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, which aired on Netflix from July 13, 2018 to December 4, 2020, also to positive reviews.
David Murray "Dav" Pilkey Jr. is an American cartoonist, author, and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known as the author and illustrator of the children's book series, Captain Underpants, and its spin-off children's graphic novel series Dog Man, the latter published under the respective writer and illustrator pen names of George Beard and Harold Hutchins, which are also the names of the two protagonists of the Captain Underpants series.
Horrible Histories is a series of illustrated history books published in the United Kingdom by Scholastic, and part of the Horrible Histories franchise. The books are written by Terry Deary, Peter Hepplewhite, and Neil Tonge, and illustrated by Martin Brown, Mike Phillips, Philip Reeve, and Kate Sheppard.
The Cambridge Footlights, commonly referred to simply as Footlights, is a student sketch comedy troupe located in Cambridge, England. Footlights was founded in 1883, and is one of Britain's oldest student sketch comedy troupes. The comedy society is run by the students of Cambridge University.
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.
Scholastic Corporation is an American multinational publishing, education, and media company that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for schools, teachers, parents, children, and other educational institutions. Products are distributed via retail and online sales and through schools via reading clubs and book fairs. Clifford the Big Red Dog, a character created by Norman Bridwell in 1963, is the mascot of the company.
Anne Archer is an American actress. Archer was named Miss Golden Globe in 1971, and in the year following, appeared in her feature film debut The Honkers (1972). She had supporting roles in Cancel My Reservation (1972), The All-American Boy (1973), and Trackdown (1976), and appeared in Good Guys Wear Black (1978), Paradise Alley (1978) and Hero at Large (1980).
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2018 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 different shows across 322 venues. Established in 1947 as an unofficial offshoot to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place in Edinburgh every August. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has become a world-leading celebration of arts and culture, surpassed only by the Olympics and the World Cup in terms of global ticketed events.
Peter Duncan is an English actor and television presenter. He was a presenter of Blue Peter in the 1980s, and made a series of family travel documentaries between 1999 and 2005. He directed, produced and performed in Jack and the Beanstalk which received a national cinema release in the UK in 2020.
Philip Reeve is a British author and illustrator of children's books, primarily known for the 2001 book Mortal Engines and its sequels. His 2007 novel, Here Lies Arthur, based on the legendary King Arthur, won the Carnegie Medal.
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David Rintoul is a Scottish stage and television actor. Rintoul was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, and won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Douglas Wood is an American children's author, author, singer, songwriter, speaker, and musician. One of Wood's children's books, Old Turtle and the Broken Truth, won the International Reading Association Book of the Year Award.
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Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was an English crime novelist, short-story writer and playwright. Her reputation rests on 66 detective novels and 15 short-story collections that have sold over two billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. She is also the most translated individual author in the world with her books having been translated into more than 100 languages. Her works contain several regular characters with whom the public became familiar, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin. Christie wrote more Poirot stories than any of the others, even though she thought the character to be "rather insufferable". Following the publication of the 1975 novel Curtain, Poirot's obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times.
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