1. Eva Maria Charlotte Michelle Ibbotson was an Austrian-born British novelist, known for her children's literature.
18 Facts About Eva Ibbotson
1. 2.
Eva Ibbotson was a finalist for the 2010 Guardian Prize at the time of her death.
3.
Eva Ibbotson's father, Bertold Paul Wiesner, was a physician who pioneered human infertility treatment.
4.
Eva Ibbotson is believed to have used his own sperm to sire perhaps 600 of the children his clinic helped to be born.
5.
Eva Ibbotson's mother, Anna Wilhelmine Gmeyner, was a successful novelist and playwright, who had worked with Bertolt Brecht and written film scripts for Georg Pabst.
6.
Eva Ibbotson's father took up a university lectureship in Edinburgh, while her mother left Vienna for Paris in 1933 after her work was banned by Adolf Hitler, putting a sudden end to her successful writing career.
7.
Eva Ibbotson returned to college, graduating with a diploma in education in 1965 from the University of Durham.
8.
Eva Ibbotson briefly became a teacher in the 1960s before embarking on her writing career.
9.
Eva Ibbotson died at her home in Newcastle on 20 October 2010, having just edited the proofs of her last children's book, One Dog and his Boy, and started work on another children's ghost story to add to her long and successful series.
10.
Eva Ibbotson began writing with the television drama Linda Came Today, which the British "Television Playhouse" series broadcast in December 1962.
11.
Eva Ibbotson won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize for Journey to the River Sea, and was a runner up for major awards in British children's literature several times.
12.
Eva Ibbotson said that she disliked thinking about the supernatural, and created the characters because she wanted to decrease her readers' fear of such things.
13.
Eva Ibbotson wrote Journey in honour of her husband, a former naturalist who had just died; the book had been in her head for years.
14.
Eva Ibbotson had said she disliked "financial greed and a lust for power", and often created antagonists in her books who have these characteristics.
15.
Eva Ibbotson was noted for several works of fiction for adults.
16.
Eva Ibbotson was surprised by the repackaging, as she believed they were books for adults, but they have been very popular with teenage audiences.
17.
Eva Ibbotson's writing for adults and teens took a new direction in 1992, when she began to move toward romantic novels that dealt with the harsh realities of war and prejudice.
18.
Eva Ibbotson's last novel for adults was A Song for Summer, set during World War II.