Chris Riddell

Chris Riddell is a prolific writer and illustrator whose work is familiar to both children and adults. He is known especially for his distinctive line drawings with their clever caricature, fascinating detail and often enchanting fantasy elements.

He has won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal three times, in 2002 for Pirate Diary, in 2004 for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver, and for The Sleeper and the Spindle in 2016. His solo work includes the Goth Girl series, the Ottoline series and the picture books The Emperor of Absurdia and Alienography. The first Goth Girl novel won the Costa Children's Book Award in 2013. He received the Hay Festival Medal for Illustration at the 2015 Hay Festival.

He has worked widely with a variety of collaborators: Paul Stewart on the Muddle Earth, Edge Chronicles and Wyrmweald series; Neil Gaiman on The Graveyard Book, The Sleeper and the Spindle, and Fortunately the Milk, and Russell Brand on Trickster Tales: The Pied Piper of Hamelin. He has also illustrated A Great Big Cuddle: Poems for the Very Young by former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen.

In addition to his children's books, Chris is a renowned political cartoonist whose work appears in The Observer, The Literary Review and The New Statesman. He lives in Brighton with his wife and has three grown-up children.

Read Chris's reflections on his two years as the Waterstone's Children's Laureate