The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen

Geraldine McCaughrean was born and educated in Enfield, North London, the third and youngest child of a fireman and a teacher. She attended Christ Church College of Education but instead of teaching chose to work for a magazine publishing house. Her favorite assignments included the bestselling children’s partworks Storyteller and Little Storyteller.  Since then, Geraldine has written more than 130 books and plays for both adults and children and has won the Carnegie Medal, Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year (three times in three decades), Smarties Bronze (four times), UK Readers’ Association Award, and wrote the Blue Peter Book of the Year 2000. In 2002, The Kite Rider and Stop the Train were both shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, with the latter being Highly Commended. Her most recent novel, Not the End of the World, won the 2004 Whitbread Children’s Book Award. Her new novel The White Darkness is published in September.