Geraldine McCaughrean (born 6 June 1951) is a British children's novelist. She has written more than 170 books, including Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004), the official sequel to Peter Pan commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the holder of Peter Pan's copyright. Her work has been translated into 44 languages worldwide. She has received the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award among others.

Personal life and education

McCaughrean was born 6 June 1951 in London to Leslie Arthur and Ethel Jones. The youngest of three children, she grew up in North London. McCaughrean attended Southgate Technical College from 1969 to 1970, then received a Bachelor of Education with honors from Christ Church College, Canterbury in 1977. McCaughrean is married to John McCaughrean, with whom she has a daughter: Ailsa.

Career

McCaughrean studied teaching but found her true vocation in writing. She claims that what makes her love writing is the desire to escape from an unsatisfactory world. Her motto is: do not write about what you know, write about what you want to know. McCaughrean's work includes many retellings of classic stories for children: The Odyssey, El Cid, The Canterbury Tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Moby Dick, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Gilgamesh. J. M. Barrie gave all rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, and in 2004, to coincide with Peter Pan's centenary, the hospital launched a competition to find the author of a sequel. McCaughrean won the competition, after submitting a synopsis and a sample chapter. Peter Pan in Scarlet was released internationally on 5 October 2006, published in the UK by Oxford University Press and in the US by Simon & Schuster. McCaughrean has written many other children's fiction books including The Kite Rider, The Stones Are Hatching, and Plundering Paradise. She has also written six historical novels for adults including: The Maypole (1990), Fire's Astonishment (1991), Lovesong (1996) and The Ideal Wife (1997). As of 2013, McCaughrean has launched an online novel based on the Hylas and Hercules myth, A Thousand Kinds of Ugly.

Awards and honours

For her lifetime contribution as a children's writer, McCaughrean was the British nominee in 2004 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition available to creators of children's books. She was elected an Honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University in 2006 and a Fellow of the English Association in 2010. She has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 2010. Four of McCaughrean's books are Junior Library Guild selections: Not the End of the World (2005), The White Darkness (2007), The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen (2011), and Where the World Ends (2020). In 2002, The Horn Book Magazine included The Kite Rider on their list of the best children's fiction of the year. In 2020, Booklist included Where the World Ends on their "Top 10 Historical Fiction for Youth" list.

Selected bibliography