Jackie French


Jacqueline French is an Australian author who has written over 140 books and has won more than 60 national and international awards. She is considered one of Australia's most popular and awarded children's authors, writing across a number of children's genres including picture books, history, fantasy and history fiction.
She is also an author of numerous books on ecology, gardening, pest control, wombats, other wildlife and hens as well as fiction for adults. She is also a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines around Australia including the Australian Women's Weekly and the Canberra Times. She also presented gardening segments on the long-running Australian TV series Burke's Backyard.

Career

French began writing Rain Stones, her first book for children, when she was 30 years old, living in a shed and in need of money to register her car. Her editor said it was the messiest and worst-spelt manuscript ever submitted, but the book ended up being shortlisted for the Children's Book Council of Australia award for the and the NSW Premier's Award.
French's books include both fictional, factional and non-fictional accounts of Australian history including Nanberry: Black Brother White, Tom Appleby, A Day to Remember, created with Mark Wilson, A Waltz for Matilda, the first in an eight-volume series, The Girl from Snowy River, The Road to Gundagai, The Night They Stormed Eureka and Flood and Fire, both created with Bruce Whatley.
Her non-fiction books include the eight-book Fair Dinkum History series that covers 60,000 years of Australian history and is published by Scholastic and Let the Land Speak: A history of Australia - how the land created our nation.
A number of her books are also part of the Australia Curriculum, including Nanberry: Black Brother White, Flood, A Day to Remember, Baby Wombat's Week, Pennies for Hitler, The Girl from Snowy River and the work she is possibly best known for, Diary of a Wombat, created with artist Bruce Whatley.
Her most recent works include To Love a Sunburnt Country and The Beach they called Gallipoli, Fire and The Hairy Nosed Wombats Find a New Home . French's royalties for that book are donated towards wombat preservation and research.
Her book, Hitler's Daughter, has been made into a stage play by Monkey Baa Theatre Company. It toured Australia in 2012 and in the United States in 2013. The play won the Robert Helpmann Award in 2007, the Drover Award in 2007 and the 2006 Drover Special Panel Award.
Monkey BAA also turned her book Pete the Sheep, created with Bruce Whatley, into a musical, which toured Australia in 2014.

Awards and recognition

French has won more than 60 awards in Australia and overseas and a number of her books have been shortlisted for numerous Australian and United States awards.
In 2014, she was awarded the Queensland Literary Awards Griffith University children's Book Award and the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Notable Award for Refuge, which was also shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Award in two categories – Children's and Community Relations. Her book The Road to Gundagai, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Awards, and short-listed for the 2016 Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature, New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Her novels Hitler's Daughter and To the Moon and Back have been awarded the CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award in 2000 and 2005, and Pennies for Hitler won the 2013 New South Wales Premier's Young People History Award. Hitler's Daughter also won the UK Wow! Award, a Semi Grant Prix Japan Award and is listed as a blue ribbon book in the USA.
One of her more popular books, Diary of a Wombat, illustrated by Bruce Whatley, has been translated into 23 languages and is the only picture book to win the Australian Book Industry Award. It was also on The New York Times bestseller list. It has also won numerous awards including the 2002 Booksellers Choice Award, Canberra's Own Outstanding List Award for Best Picture Book, 2003 KOALA Awards, Best Picture Book, The Children Book Council of Australia Books I Love Best Yearly Award, the 2003 ABA/AA Nielsen Book of the Year Award, 2003 American Library Association, Notable Book title, 2003 USA Cuffie Awards, Favourite Picture Book of the Year and Funniest Book, 2003, 2004 USA Benjamin Franklin Award, 2004 USA Lemmee Award, 2004 USA KIND Award and the 2007 Kids Reading Oz Choice Favourite Book Award. French was the 2014-15 Australian Children's Laureate and was a finalist in the 2014 Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature Award.
She was awarded the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016, French was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to literature as an author of children's books,and as an advocate for improved youth literacy. In 2016 she received the Australian Book Industry Awards Pixie O'Harris award.

Personal

French was born Jacqueline Ffrench in Sydney and grew up in Brisbane. Her parents divorced in 1967, and when her mother changed her surname from Ffrench to French, Jackie also did. In her early twenties she and her first husband moved to, near Braidwood, where she now lives with her second husband Bryan Sullivan. They have turned their property into a conservation refuge for the area's rare and endangered species.
In 1996, her sister Wendy vanished. She is presumed dead but her body has never been found. In 2003, Wendy's husband committed suicide during an investigation into his wife's disappearance.
She studied the behaviour and ecology of wombats for 40 years and is the director of The Wombat Foundation, which raises funds for research into the preservation of wombats. She is also the ACT Children's Week Ambassador, 2011 Federal Literacy Ambassador, patron of Books for Kids, YESS, Speld ACT, Speld Qld, DAGS, and joint patron of Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People with Susanne Gervais and Morris Gleitzman.
French is dyslexic and wrote I spy a Great Reader to help teachers and parents teach dyslexic children to read using varied and new methods.