Anne Fine

Anne Fine turned a snowbound week in 1971, stuck indoors with a new baby and no way of reaching the library, into a career that has run to more than seventy children's books in around forty-five languages. Born in Leicester in 1947, she read politics at Warwick, taught briefly in a girls' secondary school and spent two years as an information officer for Oxfam before her first book found a publisher in 1978. Bill's New Frock, from 1989 with pictures by Philippe Dupasquier, follows Bill Simpson, who wakes up as a girl and spends a school day learning how differently the two are treated; it took that year's Smarties Prize in the six-to-eight category. The Killer Cat's Birthday Bash, illustrated by Steve Cox, is the fourth outing for Tuffy, the unrepentant cat narrator, whose birthday party has to compete with every other Hallowe'en party in town. Fine won the Carnegie Medal for Goggle-Eyes in 1989 and again for Flour Babies in 1992, took the Whitbread children's award twice, served as Children's Laureate from 2001 to 2003, and was appointed OBE in 2003.