Aidan chambers biography for kids

  • Now i know aidan chambers
  • Breaktime aidan chambers

    • Aidan Chambers


    Born

    in Chester le Street, County Durham, England, The United Kingdom

    December 27, 1934


    Website

    http://www.aidanchambers.co.uk/


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    Born near Chester-le-Street, County Durham in 1934, Chambers was an only child, and a poor scholar; considered "slow" by his teachers, he did not learn to read fluently until the age of nine. After two years in the Royal Navy as part of his National Service, Chambers trained as a teacher and taught for three years at Westcliff High School in Southend on Sea before joining an Anglican monastery in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1960. He later used his experience as a monk in his novel Now I Know.

    His first plays, including Johnny Salter (1966), The Car and The Chicken Run (1968), were published while he was a teacher in Stroud.

    Chambers left the monastery in 1967 and a year later became a freelance writer. His works include the "Dance sequence" ofBorn near Chester-le-Street, County Durham in 1934, Chambers was an only child, and a poor scholar; considered "slow" by his teachers, he did not learn to read fluently until the age of nine. After two years in the Royal Navy as part of his National Service, Chambers trained as a teacher and taught for three years at Westcliff High School in Southend on Sea before joining an Anglican monastery in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1960. He later used his experience as a monk in his novel Now I Know.

    His first plays, including Johnny Salter (1966), The Car and The Chicken Run (1968), were published while he was a teacher in Stroud.

    Chambers left the monastery in 1967 and a year later became a freelance writer. His works include the "Dance sequence" of six novels: Breaktime, Dance on My Grave, Now I Know, The Toll Bridge, Postcards from No Man's Land and This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn. He and his wife, Nancy, founded Thimble Press and the magazine Signal to promote literature for children and young adults. They were award
     

    Biography.

         A short biography of Aidan Chambers is available for   download in Adobe Acrobat format. Please click here        1934 - 1945 Aidan Chambers was born in the country just outside Chester-le-Street seven miles north of Durham City on 27 December 1934. He was an only child, his father was a skilled woodworker and a keen gardener, his mother stayed at home, endlessly doing housework. His other male
     relatives were coal miners, his many aunts worked as maids in hotels and as shop assistants. There were five books in the home: a Bible, a small dictionary, handbooks about health and house repairs, and a collection  of Aesop's Fables with coloured illustrations. Aesop's were the first  stories Aidan heard read, while he looked at the pictures. Otherwise,  reading, apart from the daily paper, was not a family occupation. There were no other children nearby except a girl, Marion, six months older. Up to the age of ten, when his family moved to another town, they were

    With Marion, aged about 3,

     brother and sister, friends and lovers.

    in a car made for him by

     School was a shock. He and Marion were separated for the first time - a

    his father

     traumatic experience from which he thinks he never recovered. The  importance of close friendship has been a theme in all his novels. He
     liked his infant school teacher because she read a story to the class  every morning and made them act it out in the afternoon, accompanied by music improvised on drums, triangles, and toy trumpets. Aidan's best moment was as David slaying Goliath, who was played by the biggest  boy and the bully

    March 2022

    • A Dutch edition of The Age Between, titled Tussentijd, translated by Joke Linders, has been published by Schaep14.

    • My new book, The Age Between: Personal Reflections on Youth Fiction, was published by Fincham Press (University of Roehampton) on 4 November 2020.

    • An Italian translation, L'età sospesa, was published by Equilibri in September 2020.

    • François Ozon's film ÉtÉ 85, based on Dance on My Grave, was released in France and Belgium on 14 July 2020. The English subtitled version, Summer of 85, was released on 23 October in Curzon Cinemas and for streaming on Curzon Home. Received with many favourable reviews. I'm delighted with the adaptation. It's faithful to the book, while making the kind of changes necessary for a film.

    • Dance on My Grave is available as a separate edition in the Definitions series from PenguinRandomHouse, available from independent booksellers and Amazon. An edition combining Breaktime and Dance on My Grave, and an ebook edition are also available.

    • The French edition of Dance on My Grave has been reissued as a tie-in with the film, given the same title, ÉtÉ 85, and using the image from the poster of the film on the cover. A new tie-in of the Dutch edition has published by Querido's.

    • A high-quality hardback of a collection of my ghost stories, Dead Trouble & Other Ghost Stories, lavishly illustrated by Randy Broecker, with front cover artwork by Les Edwards, was published in April 2020 as A Stephen Jones Book for PS Publishing Ltd. A high-quality cased edition, signed by myself, Stephen Jones and the illustrators, is also available.

    • Rights. All requests for or information regarding all rights should be first addressed to me using my email accessed in the Contacts page.

     

    All contents are ©Aidan Chambers unless otherwise stated.

     

     

     

    Aidan Chambers

    British author (born 1934)

    This article is about the English children's author. For the professional wrestler, see Aden Chambers.

    Aidan Chambers (born 27 December 1934) is a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for Postcards from No Man's Land (1999). For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

    Life and work

    Born near Chester-le-Street, County Durham in 1934, Chambers was an only child, and a poor scholar; considered "slow" by his teachers, he did not learn to read fluently until the age of nine. After two years in the Royal Navy as part of his national service, Chambers trained as a teacher and taught for three years at Westcliff High School in Southend-on-Sea before joining an Anglican monastery in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1960. His young-adult novel Now I Know (1987) is based partly on his experiences as a monk.

    His first plays, including Johnny Salter (1966), The Car and The Chicken Run (1968), were published while he was a teacher at Archway School in Stroud.

    Chambers left the monastery in 1967 and a year later became a freelance writer. His works include the "Dance sequence" of six novels (1978 to 2005): Breaktime, Dance on My Grave, Now I Know, The Toll Bridge, Postcards from No Man's Land and This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn. He and his wife, Nancy, founded Thimble Press and the magazine Signal to promote literature for children and young adults. They were awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Award for outstanding services to children's books in 1982. From 2003 to 2006 he was President of the School Library Association.

    Awards and honours

    Chambers won two major annual book awards for Postcards from No Man's Land, published by Bodley Head in 1999, one being

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