Biography
Ian Whybrow, children's author, was born in Gillingham, Kent and grew up in Margate and in Hong Kong.
He has written over a hundred books for children from picture books to novels, short stories and poetry, and is translated into many languages. Originally a teacher, becoming head of English and Drama and head of Sixth Form at The John Lyon School in North West London, he is now a full-time writer.
The first of his Sniff stories was published in 1989, later becoming a series of books and BBC Radio broadcasts.
His books include the two popular series Little Wolf and Harry and the Dinosaurs. Little Wolf's Book of Badness won the TSB Birmingham Book Award in 1996 and a UKRA Award the same year. It was made into an animated film for television in 2003, then adapted as a play which ran at Hampstead Theatre, London in 2007/08. In 2004, the film was nominated for four British Academy Animation Awards. Little Wolf's Postbag (2000) topped the bestseller list in 2001. Harry and the Bucket Full of Dinosaurs is an animated television series which began broadcasting in 2005. The book on which the series is based, Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs, was shortlisted for the 2000 Children's Book Award, and won the Sheffield Children's Book Award and the Norfolk Libraries Children's Book Award in the same year. Whiff (2001), now reprinted as Stinky (2009), was shortlisted for the 2001 Blue Peter Book Award: Best Book to Read Aloud.
Ian Whybrow has also written a series of ten books for boys, including A Football Called Flip (2006) and Through the Cat-flap (2008), and many picture and pop-up books, including Quacky Quack-Quack! (1991), Little Farmer Joe (2001) and The Bedtime Bear (1996).
He is also the editor of the Kingfisher Book of Classic Christmas Stories (2004).
Ian Whybrow lives in Middlesex and Herefordshire. In 2009, the best part of a million copies of Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs Go To School (2006), was distributed free to children starting school across the country as part of the Booktime Programme.
