British author Michael Morpurgo was born in St. Albans, Hertforshire in 1943. He attended the University of London and studied English and French. He became a primary school teacher in Kent for about ten years. He and his wife Clare started a charity called Farms for City Children. They currently own three farms where over 2000 children a year stay for a week and experience the countryside by taking part in purposeful farmwork. He has published over 100 books and several screenplays. He won the 1995 Whitbread Children's Book Award for The Wreck of the Zanzibar, the 1996 Nestle Smarties Book Prize for The Butterfly Lion, and the 2000 Children's Book Award for Kensuke's Kingdom. Private… Peaceful won the 2005 Red House Children's Book Award and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. Five of his books have been made into movies and two have been adapted for television. He was named as the third Children's Laureate in May 2003. He currently lives in Devon.
Michael Foreman was born in Pakefield, Suffolk on March 21, 1938. At the age of fifteen, Foreman began to study art. His first children's book was published while he was still a student. He earned his M. A. from the Royal College of Art and since then, has written and/or illustrated many children's books. After leaving art school Michael traveled all over the world making films and television commercials. He has also worked on magazines, book jackets, animated films, and TV ads. He even worked for the police, sketching criminals described by witnesses. Foreman has won the Kate Greenaway Award twice, the Smarties Book Prize, The Kurt Maschler Award, the Children's Book Award, the Bologna… Book Prize and the Francis William's Illustration Award twice.