Lauren Child is an award-winning artist and writer. She is the creator of many much-loved characters, including Charlie and Lola, Clarice Bean, Hubert Horatio and Ruby Redfort.

Her first two books were published in 1999 – I Want a Pet and Clarice Bean, That’s Me, and she won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal in 2000 for I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, the first of her Charlie and Lola picture books, and published her first Clarice Bean novel in 2002 – Utterly Me, Clarice Bean. Her books have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. Her latest books are a new picture book, The Goody and an illustrated Pippi Longstocking Goes Aboard for the 75th Anniverary of Pippi Longstocking in 2020.

She was selected by Quentin Blake, the first Children’s Laureate in 1999 to represent the UK in the British Library Magic Pencil exhibition. In 2010 she was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature, and was announced as the 10th Waterstones’ Children’s Laureate in 2017.