Chris Powling was editor of the children's book magazine Books for Keeps from 1989-1996 when it won the Eleanor Farjeon Award for services to children's literature, has served on numerous prize panels and is consultant to a national children's book club.

He has written more than sixty books for children including The Mustang Machine, The Phantom Carwash, The Conker As Hard As A Diamond and The Multi-Million Pound Mascot.

Born in Kasauli in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957.

Since then he has written over five hundred short stories, essays and novellas (some included in the collections Dust on the Mountains and Classic Ruskin Bond) and more than forty books for children.

He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999, and the Delhi government's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi's Bal Sahitya Puraskar for his 'total contribution to children's literature' in 2013 and was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2014. He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended family. He has regaled generations of readers for decades.

Geraldine McCaughrean is a multi-award-winning author of picture books, fiction and retellings for children. She has won the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award and the Blue Peter Special Book to Keep Forever Award.

She is also a three-time winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award and a four-time winner of the Smarties Bronze Award. Her titles include the bestselling The Orchard Book of Greek Myths and The Orchard Book of Roman Myths. She lives in Berkshire.

Elizabeth Laird is the multi-award-winning author of several much-loved children's books, including The Garbage King, Red Sky in the Morning and The Fastest Boy in the World. She has been shortlisted for the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal six times and her novel based on time spent in refugee camps in Jordan, Welcome to Nowhere, was the winner of the UKLA Award. She lives in Britain now, but still likes to travel as much as she can.