Children's Laureate

The role of Children's Laureate is awarded once every two years to an eminent writer or illustrator of children's books to celebrate outstanding achievement in their field. The appointment of a Children's Laureate acknowledges the importance of exceptional children's authors in creating the readers of tomorrow.

Since 1999 there have been six Children's Laureates:

- Quentin Blake, 1999-2001

- Anne Fine, 2001-2003

- Michael Morpurgo, 2003-2005

- Jacqueline Wilson, 2005-2007

- Michael Rosen, 2007-2009

- Anthony Browne, 2009-2011

"I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books, and the reading of both pictures and words. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book." Anthony Browne

Anthony Browne is an internationally acclaimed author and illustrator of children's books, with nearly forty titles to his name. He creates strongly narrative watercolours that blend near-photographic realism with fantastical, surreal touches and ingenious visual puns. His skilful use of colour, pattern and background detail subtly conveys an exquisite empathy for his lonely and sensitive child protagonists (both human and ape). Gorillas feature in many of Anthony's books. He says, "I am fascinated by them and the contrast they represent - their huge strength and gentleness. They're thought of as being very fierce creatures and they're not."

Anthony was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire in 1946 and grew up near Halifax. Inspired by his father (who was a professional boxer for a short time and then a landlord, a school teacher and a soldier), he was interested in art and drawing from an early age. He says of his father, "He was an unusual man - outwardly strong and confident, but also shy and sensitive - a bit like the gorillas I love to illustrate now. As well as drawing, he encouraged me to play a lot of sports, such as rugby and soccer and cricket. I was small for my age and I used to go to a fairly tough school - if I hadn't been good at sports, I would probably have been bullied."

When he left school, Anthony attended Leeds Art College, where he graduated with a graphic arts degree in 1967. Before focusing full-time on children's books, he worked as a medical illustrator for three years and illustrated greetings cards for Gordon Fraser in the UK for 15 years.

Anthony's first book, Through the Magic Mirror, published in 1976, and a number of other successful books followed. Gorilla, published in 1983, won an unprecedented number of awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal, the Kurt Maschler 'Emil' Award, the New York Times Best Illustrated Book and The Boston Globe Book Award. It is now universally accepted as a classic. One of his best-loved characters is the chimp, Willy, who has appeared in Willy the Wimp, Willy the Champ, Willy and Hugh and Willy the Wizard.

His books have received many distinctions, including the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1983 for Gorilla and again in 1992 for Zoo. Gorilla (1983), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1988) and Voices in the Park (1988) all won the Kurt Maschler 'Emil' Award. In 2000 he received the highest international honour for illustration, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, for his services to children's literature - the first British illustrator ever to win the prize. More recently he was Illustrator in Residence at the Tate. The Shape Game was based on his experiences of this time and was shortlisted for the 2004 Kate Greenaway Award. It has also been voted the Honor Book in the US Boston Globe-Honor Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature.

Anthony was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education at Kingston University in 2005. His work has been widely exhibited and his books are published all over the world. In May he was invited to Korea, to see his work exhibited at Hangram Design Museum in Seoul, and while he was there he ran workshops with children and played the shape game with them.

Jacqueline Wilson, Children's Laureate 2005-2007, was born in Bath in 1945. She spent her childhood in Kingston-on-Thames in Surrey, where she still lives today, working full-time as a writer.

She was educated at Coombe Girls School, Surrey, relocating to Dundee to start work as a teenage journalist with D.C. Thomson, writing for Jackie teenage magazine, which was named after her.

She has written many books for children, and her sensitive understanding of modern children, the way they live and the problems they encounter, together with her sense of humour, have made her an extremely popular author, particularly with the nine to 11 year age range.

She has sold over 25 million books in the UK alone, which have been translated into over 30 languages, and at one point in 2000, six of her books were listed among the top 10 best-selling children's paperbacks. In 2004 she replaced Catherine Cookson as the most borrowed author in Britain's libraries, a position she retained for four years.

Her books include The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991) and its sequel, The Dare Game (2000), which tell the story of a child who lives in residential and foster care; The Bed and Breakfast Star (1994), about a family living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation; and The Illustrated Mum (1999), who is covered in tattoos and has multiple boyfriends.

Bad Girls (1996) deals with the subject of bullying, and Double Act (1995), is about identical twins with very different personalities.

More recent books include Candy Floss (2006), in which Floss faces a dilemma over whether to stay with her Dad in England or move to Australia with her Mum, and Starring Tracy Beaker (2006), which sees the return of the much-loved Tracy in a third instalment of her life story.

Jacqueline Wilson has written readers and books for younger children as well as radio plays for the BBC. Her series of books for older readers, Girls in Love (1997), Girls Under Pressure (1998), Girls Out Late (1999), and Girls in Tears (2002) was filmed for ITV television.

She wrote her own screen adaptation of Double Act for Channel 4, which won the Royal Television Society Best Children's Fiction Award, and The Story of Tracy Beaker ran for five series between 2002 to 2006 on CBBC.

Her books have also been adapted for radio - including The Bed and Breakfast Star, The Story of Tracy Beaker and The Dare Game, all of which have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Stage adaptations of The Lottie Project (1997) and Double Act have toured nationally.

In 2002, Jacqueline Wilson was awarded an OBE for services to literacy in schools, and in the 2008 New Year Honours she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).

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