Mal Peet’s first novel, Keeper, won the Branford Boase Award, a Nestle Children’s Book Award and, in Germany, was shortlisted for the Jugendliteraturpreis. It also introduced Paul Faustino, the hard-bitten but vulnerable character who features in two further novels set in South America: The Penalty and Exposure, which won The Guardian Prize in 2009.

Mal is also the author of the Carnegie Medal winner Tamar, in which the desperate acts of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Holland cast a long shadow into the future.

With his wife, Elspeth Graham, Mal also writes for younger children. Their classic story Cloud Tea Monkeys, illustrated by Juan Wijngaard, was shortlisted for the 2011 Kate Greenaway Medal.

Writing and Publishing Children's Literature

21 May 2011