Judith Kerr
About Author
JUDITH KERR was born on 14 June 1923 in Berlin, and escaped from Hitler's Germany with her parents and brother in 1933, when she was nine years old. Her father was a drama critic and a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis.
The family lived in Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936. Judith went to eleven different schools, worked in the Red Cross during the war, and won a scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1945. Since then she has worked as a painter, a BBC television scriptwriter and, for the past thirty years, as author and illustrator of children's books.
Her three autobiographical novels are based on her early wandering years (which against all the odds she greatly enjoyed), her adolescence in London during the war, and finally on a brief return to Berlin as a young married woman. The stories have been internationally acclaimed and, to the author's considerable satisfaction, have done particularly well in Germany, where they are sometimes used as an easy introduction to a difficult period of Germany history. Judith's trilogy Out of The Hitler Time was reissued by HarperCollins Children' Books as When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Bombs on Aunt Dainty, and A Small Person Far Away in May 2002.
In addition to the trilogy, Judith is also renowned for her family-favourite feline creation, Mog. This enduringly popular character has gently charmed generations of children and has starred in a series of books. Mog books have featured on bestseller lists for the past 30 years and have sold more than 3 million copies.
The Tiger Who Came To Tea, was Judith's first picture book for HarperCollins and was published in 1968. It has become a children's classic, selling over 2 million copies. Her most recent book, Goose in a Hole, published by HarperCollins Children's Books in October 2005, is told with characteristic skill and gentle humour children will immediately warm to the adventurous goose and applaud her spirit and heroism.
Judith is married to scriptwriter Nigel Kneale and they live in Barnes, London. Their daughter Tacy makes puppets for films and their son Matthew is an acclaimed novelist who won the Whitbread Award for his novel, English Passengers.
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