AGE 9+

francesca simon grew up in california and attended both yale and oxford universities , where she speacialised in medieval studies. how this prepared her to write children’s books she cannot imagine, but it did give her a thorough grounding in alliteration.

she then threw away a lucrative career as a medievalist and worked as a freelance journalist,writing for the sunday times, guardian,mail on sunday,telegraph , and vogue (us).after her son joshua was born in 1989,she started writing children’s  books full time. one of the uk’s best-selling children’s writers,francesca has published over 50 books, including the immensely popular horrid henry series,which has now sold over twelve million copies.