Need to send a gift?
Click to buy book vouchers

 

Who is Julia Eccleshare ?

Julia Eccleshare has spent her working life to date within children's books as a critic, an editor, an author and a commentator. Apart from her current role as Editorial contributor and advisor to Lovereading4kids, she is the children's editor of the Guardian.

She has co-edited and is the author of a number of books including the Rough Guide to Teenage Literature, the fascinating and insightful Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter: Portraits of Children's Writers, which is a celebration of a century of children's literature, as well as Treasure Islands: the Woman's Hour Guide to Children's Books. She also spent some considerable time as a children's fiction editor in UK publishing. She has been a selector to the Children's Books of the Year, a guide to the best books published annually, a member of the advisory board of a children's book club and for some while was children's books editor of The Bookseller. She regularly appears as a judge or Chair of judges on some of the major children's book prizes including the Whitbread (now called the Costa) and the Nestle among others.

From this engagement with the field she has encyclopaedic knowledge of what has been published for children over the last twenty five or thirty years, how fashions have changed, what has worked and how best to help children and their parents find the book that they will most enjoy. Julia was awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Prize in 2000 in recognition of her outstanding contribution to children's books. She is married with four children and lives in London.