Vivian French was best known at the five schools she went to for being extremely weedy, and for talking a lot. She did English at university, and then became an actor, a story-teller, and finally a writer of children's books... She’s not sure how many she's written, but her daughter Jemima says it’s over 200. She also says it would be helpful if Vivian was tidier, and kept copies of her books in a nice neat row. Vivian writes for all ages – and also non-fiction, which is very exciting because you find out so many things you never knew about. At the moment she’s writing books about the Tiara Club, Draglins, Mummies (the Egyptian kind) and Worms, and she's just finishing a novel called The Bag of Bones. (If she's not working on at least five books at the same time she worries she'll never be asked to write again.) The book she most enjoyed writing is The Robe of Skulls, which came out in June 2007. She does rather too much travelling in order to swap ideas about books and writing with children and adults, and this often makes her late delivering the books she's meant to have written. She also writes plays. She’d love to be an illustrator, but she doesn’t draw well enough. She lives in Edinburgh, and has four grown-up daughters and three grandchildren... and she’s less weedy than she used to be. She still talks a lot, though. People often ask her where she comes from, and the answer is she doesn't know. Her parents and grandparents never seemed to stay anywhere for very long, although her grandfather's great grandparents came from Yorkshire. If she weren't a writer she’d like to be a long distance lorry driver.
Selected Bibliography: Baby Baby, Bert and the Burglar, Bill Bird's New Boots, Brian the Giant, Buck and His Truck, Caribou Journey, Caterpillar Butterfly, Chocolate, Falling Awake, Farmer Duck, Growing Frogs, Hedgehogs Don't Eat Hamburgers, I Love You, Grandpa, I Spy ABC, Kick Back, Little Ghost, Little Rabbit Foo Foo, Once Upon a Picnic, Once Upon a Time, One Ballerina Two, Pig in Love, The Robe of Skulls, Singing to the Sun, T. Rex, The Tiara Club, The Tiger and the Jackal.