Life and Death

Philip Pullman has won many awards for his children's books, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Award, the Smarties Prize, and, most recently, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for The Amber Spyglass. The acclaimed fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials has been published in more than twenty languages and came second in the recent BBC Big Read Top 100 poll. He was awarded the CBE in 2004. Kate Agnew has chaired the Booksellers Association Children s Group and has served as a judge for the Smarties Prize and the Whitbread Award. She was a contributor to the Cambridge Guide to Children's Books, co-wrote Children at War with Geoff Fox and has recently edited a series of short story collections for Egmont. In 1999 she won a special British Book Award for her contribution to the National Year of Reading.