Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the book.
Dinner for One, also known as The 90th Birthday, is a television comedy sketch that is repeated every New Year's Eve in several European countries. The two-hander sketch was originally written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theatre. After featuring on the stage, the German TV broadcaster, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), recorded the sketch in 1962 as an 18-minute black-and-white videotape recording, performed in English by British comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden. The sketch begins with an introduction in German, followed by the main act in English, and is available online.
Sophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor is an English singer and songwriter. She first came to prominence in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the indie rock band Theaudience. After the group disbanded, Ellis-Bextor went solo and achieved success beginning in the early 2000s. Her music is mainstream pop and dance with influences of disco, nu-disco, and 1980s electronic music.
Anna Judith Gertrud Helene Kerr was a German-born British writer and illustrator whose books sold more than 10 million copies around the world. She created both enduring picture books such as the Mog series and The Tiger Who Came to Tea and acclaimed novels for older children such as the semi-autobiographical When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which gave a child's-eye view of escaping Hitler's persecution in the Second World War. Born in the Weimar Republic, she came to Britain with her family in 1935 to escape persecution during the rise of the Nazis.
Sophie Kerr was a prolific writer of the early 20th century whose stories about smart, ambitious women mirrored her own evolution from small-town girl to successful career woman. At a time when few women were financially self-sufficient, Kerr made her way from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to New York City, where she supported herself as a magazine editor and a writer of more than 500 short stories, 23 novels, several poems and a play that ran on Broadway.
Hester Sophia Frances Grigson is an English cookery writer and celebrity cook. She has followed the same path and career as her mother, Jane Grigson. Her father was the poet and writer Geoffrey Grigson, and her half-brother was musician and educator Lionel Grigson.
Donald Blackstone, known professionally as Don Black, is an English lyricist. His works have included numerous musicals, movie, television themes and hit songs. He has provided lyrics for John Barry, Charles Strouse, Matt Monro, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Quincy Jones, Hoyt Curtin, Lulu, Jule Styne, Henry Mancini, Meat Loaf, Michael Jackson, Elmer Bernstein, Michel Legrand, Hayley Westenra, A. R. Rahman, Marvin Hamlisch and Debbie Wiseman.
Mog is a fictional character in a series of children's books written by Judith Kerr. Other regularly occurring characters include Mr and Mrs Thomas and their two children Nicky and Debbie. In each book Mog gets into a different conundrum with a new character or event. Unusually for a popular children's series, Mog dies in the final book, 2001's Goodbye, Mog.
Thomas Henry Charles Parker Bowles is a British food writer and food critic. Parker Bowles is the author of seven cookbooks and, in 2010, won the Guild of Food Writers 2010 award for his writings on British food. He is known for his appearances as a judge in numerous television food series and for his reviews of restaurant meals around the UK and overseas for GQ,Esquire, and The Mail on Sunday.
Jan Brett is an American illustrator and writer of children's picture books. Her colorful, detailed depictions of a wide variety of animals and human cultures range from Scandinavia to Africa. Her titles include The Mitten, The Hat, and Gingerbread Baby. She has adapted or retold traditional stories such as the Gingerbread Man and Goldilocks and has illustrated classics such as "The Owl and the Pussycat."
Rosemary Wells is an American writer and illustrator of children's books. She often uses animal characters to address real human issues. Some of her most well-known characters are Max & Ruby and Timothy from Timothy Goes To School (both were later adapted into Canadian-animated preschool television series, the former airing on Nickelodeon and the latter as part of PBS Kids on PBS.
David Bernard Wood OBE is an English actor, author, composer, director, magician and producer. The Times called him "the National Children's Dramatist". In 1979, he joined Bernard Cribbins, Maurice Denham, and Jan Francis in a reading of The Hobbit for the BBC Television show Jackanory.
Out of the Hitler Time is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by Judith Kerr for children and young adults.
A Christmas Carol, the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens (1812–1870), is one of the English author's best-known works. It is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy miser who hates Christmas but who is transformed into a caring, kindly person through the visitations of four ghosts. The classic work has been dramatised and adapted countless times for virtually every medium and performance genre, and new versions appear regularly.
Paddington Bear is a fictional character in children's literature. He first appeared on 13 October 1958 in the children's book A Bear Called Paddington, and has been featured in more than twenty books written by British author Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum, David McKee, R. W. Alley, and other artists.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a Christmas children's book by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel written in rhymed verse with illustrations by the author. It follows the Grinch, a cranky, solitary creature who attempts to thwart the public's Christmas plans by stealing Christmas gifts and decorations from the homes of the nearby town of Whoville on Christmas Eve. Miraculously, the Grinch realizes that Christmas is not all about money and presents.
The Gruffalo is a 2009 animated fantasy short television film based on the 1999 picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler.
The Mountains of Madness is an audiovisual musical adaptation of the works of H. P. Lovecraft by Tiger Lillies, Danielle de Picciotto and Alexander Hacke. It was conceived by Hacke in 2005. Tiger Lillies performs the music with narration by Hacke from selections of Lovecraft's stories.
Julia Kerr was a German composer and pianist. As a composer she used the name Julia Kerwey. She also worked as a translator during the Nuremberg trials.
In C. S. Lewis's series of children's books, The Chronicles of Narnia, the depictions of food evoke nostalgia for the simple pleasures missing during post World War II rationing in the United Kingdom, and act as a symbol of positive or negative spiritual nourishment. In Lewis's essay "On Three Ways of Writing for Children", he writes of the food imagery in his books: "I myself like eating and drinking, I put in what I would have liked to read when I was a child and what I still like reading now that I am in my fifties". Themes that literary scholars have identified include the dichotomy of wholesome versus magical foods, and food-as-temptation.
