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Alan Gibbons is an English author of children's books and a Blue Peter Book Award. He lives in Liverpool, England, where he used to teach in a primary school. His father was a farm labourer, but was hurt in an accident when Alan was eight years old. The family had to move to Crewe, Cheshire. He began to write for his pupils as a teacher, but never tried to get any of his work published.
Gibbons trained to be a teacher in his mid-thirties and starting writing short stories for his students. Later, he began to write professionally. In 2000, he won the Blue Peter Book Award in the category "The Book I Couldn't Put Down" category for Shadow of the Minotaur. He was a judge for the 2001 Blue Peter Book Awards. He was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal twice in 2001 and 2003 and shortlisted twice for the Booktrust Teenage Prize. He has also won the Leicester Book of the Year, the Stockport Book Award, the Angus Book Award, the Catalyst Award, the Birmingham Chills Award, the Salford Young Adult Book Award, the Hackney Short Novel Prize, the Our Best Book Award and the Salford Librarians' Special Award.
In addition to being a full-time writer, he is an educational consultant and speaks at schools across the UK and abroad, including visits to Switzerland, Norway, France, Spain, Cyprus, Brazil, China, Africa, Brunei and the Middle East. On a trip to Malawi he participated in a scheme to deliver 9,000 books to schools through the Char Char Trust and visited the Ndi Moyo clinic. On his blog www.alangibbons.net he asked people to take out banker's orders to support these charities and their work for local people. He has been a regular speaker at the Edinburgh and London Book Festivals, the Northern Children's Book Festival, Hay on Wye and Children's Books Ireland. His work is published in nineteen languages and he visits many schools internationally.
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