Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers combined teaching, editing, and a sustained interest in how young people find language for difficult experience. The Toll Bridge forms part of his six-volume Dance Sequence. It places Jan in an isolated bridge house, where his friendships with Tess and Adam unsettle the future others have planned for him. Dying to Know You is separate from that sequence and uses a cross-generational friendship: Karl, a dyslexic teenager, asks an older novelist to help answer questions from his girlfriend Fiorella. Their interviews gradually give each man a new way to understand himself. Before concentrating on literature, Chambers served in the Royal Navy, taught school, and spent seven years in a monastic community. He and his wife Nancy later founded the publishing house Thimble Press and ran the literary magazine Signal. His honors included the Carnegie Medal and Michael L. Printz Award for Postcards from No Man's Land, followed by the 2002 Hans Christian Andersen Award for his lasting contribution to children's literature.