Alexander Martin Clunes, OBE is an English actor, television presenter, film director and comedian. He is best known for portraying Martin Ellingham in the ITV drama series Doc Martin and Gary Strang in Men Behaving Badly. Clunes has narrated a number of documentaries for ITV, the first of which was Islands of Britain in 2009. He has since presented a number of documentaries centred on animals. He has also voiced Kipper the Dog in the animated series, Kipper.
The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award is a literary award that annually recognises one fiction book written for children or young adults and published in the United Kingdom. It is conferred upon the author of the book by The Guardian newspaper, which established it in 1965 and inaugurated it in 1967. It is a lifetime award in that previous winners are not eligible. At least since 2000 the prize is £1,500.
The Nestlé Children's Book Prize, and Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for a time, was a set of annual awards for British children's books that ran from 1985 to 2007. It was administered by Booktrust, an independent charity that promotes books and reading in the United Kingdom, and sponsored by Nestlé, the manufacturer of Smarties candy. It was one of the most respected and prestigious prizes for children's literature.
Donna Jo Napoli is an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, as well as a prominent linguist.
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. Her critically and popularly acclaimed Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional dystopia to explore racism. Her book New Windmills Spring sold out within a week of publishing it.
Military animals are trained animals that are used in warfare and other combat related activities. As working animals, different military animals serve different functions. Horses, elephants, camels, and other animals have been used for both transportation and mounted attack. Pigeons were used for communication and photographic espionage. Many other animals have been reportedly used in various specialized military functions, including rats and pigs. Dogs have long been employed in a wide variety of military purposes, more recently focusing on guarding and bomb detection, and along with dolphins and sea lions are in active use today.
The Queen's Nose is a children's novel by Dick King-Smith, first published by Gollancz in 1983 with illustrations by Jill Bennett. Set in England, where King-Smith lived, it features a girl who can use a fifty pence coin to make wishes. It was adapted as the 1995 TV series The Queen's Nose, which was a great success and ran for 7 series.
Jamie Rix is an English children's author, television comedy writer, and media producer. He is best known for the book series Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids and The War Diaries of Alistair Fury; both were adapted into award-winning children's television programmes.
Mark Morris is an English author known for his series of horror novels, although he has also written several novels based on the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He used the pseudonym J. M. Morris for his 2001 novel Fiddleback.
Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids is the generic trademarked title for a series of award-winning children's books by British author Jamie Rix which were later adapted into an animated television series of the same name produced for ITV. Known for its surreal black comedy and horror, the franchise was immensely popular with children and adults, and the cartoon became one of the most-watched programmes on CITV in the 2000s; a reboot of the cartoon series was produced for Nickelodeon UK and NickToons UK in 2011 with 26 episodes with the added tagline of Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam!. The first four books in the series were published between 1990 and 2001 by a variety of publishers and have since gone out of print but are available as audio adaptations through Audible and iTunes. The ITV cartoon was produced by Honeycomb Animation and aired between 2000 and 2006 with 6 series; reruns aired on the Nickelodeon channels along with the 2011 series.
The Branford Boase Award is a British literary award presented annually to an outstanding children's or young-adult novel by a first-time writer; "the most promising book for seven year-olds and upwards by a first time novelist."
The Blue Peter Book Awards are a set of literary awards for children's books conferred by the BBC television programme Blue Peter. They were inaugurated in 2000 for books published in 1999. The Awards have been managed by reading charity, Booktrust, since 2006. As of 2013, there are two award categories: Best Story and Best Book with Facts.
The Booktrust Early Years Awards, originally the Sainsbury’s Baby Book Award(s), was a set of annual literary prizes for children's picture books. It was administered by Booktrust, an independent charity that promotes books and reading; from 1999 to 2004 it was sponsored by the supermarket chain Sainsbury's. The last Awards year was 2010.
Alex Shearer is a British novelist and scriptwriter. He was born in Wick, in the north of Scotland. Alex Shearer sold his first TV script at the age of 29, after a varied career of some 30 odd jobs.
Along Came a Dog is a children's novel by Meindert DeJong, and Maurice Sendak. It was a Newbery Medal honor book in 1959.
Margaret Ruth Bhatty was an Indian schoolteacher, freelance journalist and writer of children's books and short stories for adults.
