About the Authors

Julia Eccleshare

Julia Eccleshare, who wrote the list, is Co-Director of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and Children's Books Editor of The Guardian. In addition to numerous anthologies, her books include Treasure Islands: The Woman's Hour Guide to Children's Reading, A Guide to the Harry Potter Novels, Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter: Portraits of Children's Writers, The Rough Guide to Picture Books and, with Nicholas Tucker, The Rough Guide to Teenage Books. She won the Eleanor Farjeon Award in 2000 in recognition of her outstanding contribution to children's books.

Prue Goodwin

Prue Goodwin, who wrote the introduction, is a freelance lecturer in literacy and children's books and works part time at the University of Reading. She taught in primary and middle schools for over twenty years and was an advisory teacher for language development before spending ten years as Director of INSET at the Reading and Language Information Centre, University of Reading.

Prue gives keynote talks at conferences, runs courses on language and literacy development, acts as a consultant to publishers of children's books and researches literacy development in schools. In 2005, Prue edited the second edition of The Literate Classroom, a collection of articles by leading teacher educators published by David Fulton Publishers. The Articulate Classroom, on speaking and listening, was published in 2001 and Literacy through Creativity in 2004. She is currently editing her fourth book, Understanding Children's Books: a guide for education professionals, which is due to be published in 2008.

Prue regularly returns to the classroom to introduce children to a range of literature and to encourage wide, voracious reading. She has a personal, as well as professional, interest in children's books, particularly picture books, and enjoys being associated with the MA in Children's Literature at the University of Roehampton, London.

Contact Prue at p.e.goodwin@reading.ac.uk