by Lois Lowry
Meg' Cabot is the author of many books for young readers and adults, including the phenomenally successful Princess Diaries series, All-American Girl, Teen Idol, and How to Be Popular. When she is not reliving the horrors of her high school experience through her fiction, Meg divides her time between New York City and Key West with her husband and their one-eyed cat, Henrietta.
Melvin Burgess has written several highly acclaimed books for young readers, including Smack, which won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in England; Lady: My Life as a Bitch; and Doing It, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction. He lives in Manchester, England, with his two children.
Anne Fine is a former Children's Laureate of England and a two-time winner of both of England's highest literary awards, the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year. She has written many highly acclaimed books for young readers, including Up on Cloud Nine; Alias Madame Doubtfire, on which the Robin Williams movie hit Mrs. Doubtfire was based; Flour Babies; The Tulip Touch; and Bad Dreams. The mother of two daughters, Anne Fine lives in County Durham, England.
Sue Limb lives on an organic farm in a remote part of Gloucestershire. Her writing career has included various assignments for magazines and newspapers, radio work, television series, and several novels for adults published in Britain. Her books for children include Big and Little, China Lee, Me Jane, Big Trouble, Mr. Loopy and Mrs. Snoopy, and Come Back, Grandma, which was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize. Her novels about the charmingly crazed Jess Jor-dan, who is featured in her story “You're a Legend,” include Girl, 15, Charming but Insane; Girl, Nearly 16: Absolute Torture; and Girl, Going on 17: Pants on Fire, and are available from Delacorte Press. Sue Limb is quite interested in gar-dening, travel, green politics, agriculture, and rare breeds of poultry, about which she is particularly mad.
Jacqueline Wilson has written more than eighty-five books for young readers of all ages. In England, her Double Act won both the Children's Book of the Year Award and the Smarties Prize. Jacqueline Wilson also won the Children's Book Award for The Suitcase Kid, Girls in Tears, and The Illustrated Mum and has been short-listed five times and runner-up twice for the prestigious Carnegie Medal. She was named Children's Laureate for 2005 through 2007. Jacqueline Wilson lives near London in a small house crammed with fifteen thousand books.
Celia Rees was born and brought up in Solihull, England, and taught English in city comprehensive schools for seventeen years. She now spends her time writing, talking to readers in schools and libraries, tutoring creative writing students, and reviewing. She writes for children and teenagers. Her first book was published in 1993. Since then she has written many more novels and a number of short stories. Her novels have been translated into twenty-seven different languages and include Witch Child, Sorceress, and Pirates!, all of which were short-listed for major awards, both in Britain and abroad. Celia Rees lives in Leamington Spa, England, with her husband. She has a grown-up daughter, Catrin, who lives in London.
Malorie Blackman was a computer programmer before her first book was published in 1990. Since then she has had more than fifty books published, including the Naughts and Crosses trilogy (published in the United States by Simon and Schuster and winner of the FCBG Children's Book Award 2002 in Britain), Pig Heart Boy (which was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal in Britain and also won a BAFTA for Best Children's Drama), Thief!, and Hacker. When Malorie is not writing, she loves to read, watch films, and play computer games. More information can be found on her Web site, www.malorieblackman.com.
Rosie Rushton has written more than thirty novels for teens and young adults, including the Fab Five series, which is very popular in the United States; the What a Week series; and some very successful novels for older teens, her favorites being Waving, Not Drowning; Tell Me I'm OK Really; and Last Seen Wearing Trainers. She lives in Northamptonshire, in the middle of England, which is odd for someone who loves the sea. She is passionately interested in the lives and loves, as well as the angst, of teenagers and gets much of her inspiration from the young people she meets in her roles as a school governor, a grandmother, and a lay minister in the Church of England. She knows a book is working out well when her characters start refusing to do as she tells them—something that happens with alarming regularity. Her interests include researching her family tree, playing with her grandchildren, traveling, sharing good food with friends, and reading.
Cathy Hopkins lives in London with her husband and four cats, Molly, Maisie, Emmylou, and Otis. She spends most of her time locked in a shed at the bottom of the gar-den pretending to write books but is actually in there lis-tening to music, hippie dancing, and talking to her friends on e-mail. Apart from that, she is looking for the answers to why we're here, where we've come from, and what it's all about. She is also looking for the perfect hairdresser. So far she has had forty-two books published, including the Mates, Dates series for teens, which has been published in twenty-three countries, including the United States, where the series has sold more than a million copies.
Published by Delacorte Press
an imprint of Random House Children's Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2007 by Delacorte Press
Originally published in slightly different form in the United Kingdom
by Piccadilly Press Ltd., in 2006
All rights reserved.
Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
1% of profits from the sale of this book will be donated to CureSearch.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49785-7
v3.0
