Into the Woods

Lyn Gardner was born in London. A theatre critic on The Guardian, she goes to the theatre five or six nights a week, which should leave no time for writing books at all. Prior to joining The Guardian she was a tea lady, a waitress, sold (or failed to sell) advertising space for a magazine called Sludge, wrote for The Independent and helped found the London listings magazine, City Limits, the largest publishing co-op in Europe. She and her two daughters have one venerable goldfish (there were two, but one came to a tragic end) and a horse-who is the most demanding, temperamental and expensive member of the family.

Mini Grey was given her name after being born in a Mini in a car park in Newport, Wales. She studied for an MA in Sequential Illustration at Brighton under the tutelage of John Vernon Lord. Mini also worked as a primary school teacher in Oxford, where she now lives. Her books include Egg Drop, The Pea and the Princess (shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal), Biscuit Bear (winner of the Nestlé Children's Book Prize Gold Award), Traction Man is Here (winner of the Boston Horn Book Award and shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal), The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon (winner of the Nestlé Children's Book Prize Bronze Award and winner of the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal), and Traction Man meets Turbodog. Mini Grey is one of the Big Picture's ten Best New Illustrators.