Eva Ibbotson

Eva Ibbotson is the award-winning author of many books for children and adults. She has a daughter and three sons, who showed her that children like to read about ghosts, wizards, and witches “because they are just like people but madder and more interesting.”

She was born in Vienna, in Austria, but moved to England with her family when the Nazis came to power. After training to be a physiologist which she didn’t enjoy because she didn’t like doing experiments on animals, Eva got married and had four very nice children.

Her first children’s book, The Great Ghost Rescue was published in 1975, and she is best known for titles like Journey to the River Sea and The Dragonfly Pool. Eva died in 2010, aged 85.