Marilyn Brocklehurst was a Children's and Schools' Librarian in London, Buckinghamshire and Norfolk. She currently works as an adviser and enthusiast at Norfolk Children's Book Centre, which she set up in her garden in rural North Norfolk in 1986. She is chair of North Norfolk Children's Book Group, is a member of the Booksellers' Association Children's Committee, is an IBBY committee member and has been a member of the Carnegie/Greenaway and Smarties judging panels.

Julia is the Children's Book Editor of the Guardian newspaper and Co-Director of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education. She is a critic and commenter on children’s books including being a regular contributor to Radio 4’s Front Row and Open Book and BBC 1’s The Culture Show.

Marilyn Brocklehurst was a Children's and Schools' Librarian in London, Buckinghamshire and Norfolk. She currently works as an adviser and enthusiast at Norfolk Children's Book Centre, which she set up in her garden in rural North Norfolk in 1986. She is chair of North Norfolk Children's Book Group, is a member of the Booksellers' Association Children's Committee, is an IBBY committee member and has been a member of the Carnegie/Greenaway and Smarties judging panels.

Graham Marks is the Children's Editor for Publishing News, where he produces a weekly news column and writes features and interviews. Graham is also a children's/YA author who has worked with Scholastic, Bantam and most recently Bloomsbury, for whom he has written 'Radio Radio', 'How it Works' and his latest title 'Zoo'. At the moment he is writing his first book, a historical novel, for Usborne.

Mal Peet lives in Devon, trying to forget his past life as a writer of educational books. His first novel, Keeper (Walker Books) won the Branford Boase Award in 2004 (to his astonished delight) and was shortlisted for the Nestle Smarties Prize.

Karen has been a librarian for 30 years in public and school libraries and a reader for long as long as she can remember. She has been involved with the CILIP Youth Libraries Group as Conference Manager and Chair, which meant that she also was Chair of the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Awards in 2002. Karen is also on the Committees of the School Libraries Group and the School Libraries and Resource Centres Section of IFLA.