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2012-12-17 begin to trim redundant material
2012-12-21 move from FSF/Children's/work

Jenny Nimmo

Oxford Companion to CHildren's Literature (1999) at Questia.com [Gale, Cengage Learning] --free access to the first page of each section. For example 'N' p370 (Narnia, Natural history)

Natural history was a popular subject from the beginning of British juvenile publishing; A DESCRIPTION OF THREE HUNDRED ANIMALS ( 1730), published (and probably written) by Thomas BOREMAN, was one of the first books that could justly be described as 'for the entertainment of youth'.

David Millward and Gwen Millward

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more DAVID MILLWARD and GWEN MILLWARD material

other books illus by David[1]

  • The Dragons of Snowdon,

The Dragons of Snowdon and Other Welsh Legends (Methuen, 1989, ISBN 0416127320), illus. DWM -- Pied Piper; same series as Snow SPider

Jenny and Bob (David Wynn Millward, Delacorte, 1991, 48pp ISBN 0385304315), Millward, illus. Kady MacDonald Denton

David

Gwen

Goodreads author profile

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[1] January 15, 1944 in Windsor, Berkshire, The United Kingdom

Jenny Nimmo was born in Windsor, Berkshire, England and educated at boarding schools in Kent and Surrey from the age of six until the age of sixteen, when she ran away from school to become a drama student/assistant stage manager with Theater South East. She graduated and acted in repertory theater in various towns and cities: Eastbourne, Tunbridge Wells, Brighton, Hastings, and Bexhill.

She left Britain to teach English to three Italian boys in Almafi, Italy. On her return, she joined the BBC, first as a picture researcher, then as an assistant floor manager, studio manager (news) then finally a director/adaptor with Jackanory (a BBC storytelling program for children). She left BBC to marry a Welsh artist David Wynn Millward and went to live in Wales in her husband's family home. They live in a very old converted watermill, and the river is constantly threatening to break in, as it has done several times in the past, most dramatically on her youngest child's first birthday. During the summer they run a residential school of art, and she has to move her office, put down tools (type-writer and pencil, and don an apron and cook! They have three grown-up children, Myfawny, Ianto, and Gwenwyfar.

RH Australia

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Nimmo at Random House Australia

Jenny Nimmo has always loved reading and writing. She read all the books in the junior school library and had to beg permission to join the senior school library when she was only nine. Before becoming a full-time writer she was an actress, a stage manager and a floor manager for the BBC.

She nows lives in a remote part of Wales and is probably best known for the Award winning Snow Spider Trilogy, stories that combine Welsh myth, the supernatural and family conflict. These stories have been made into an HTV series starring Sian Phillips.

She says she enjoys writing about magic because it is inexplicable and unpredictable, and anything can happen. She is currently working on a series of books called the Children of the Red King.

Scholastic

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Nimmo at Scholastic

Jenny Nimmo is the author of The Snow Spider, the winner of the Smarties prize, and Griffin's Castle, which was short-listed for the Smarties Prize, the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread award. Her Children of the Red King series, which includes The New York Times and Book Sense best seller Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy, has sold over two million copies.

Nimmo's love of books was evident at an early age. At nine years old she had already read all of the books in her school's junior library and was begging for permission to join the senior library. Jenny realized early in her childhood that writing stories could be as much fun as reading them. So began her years of writing and thrilling her friends with creepy stories

Before Nimmo established her career as a writer, she worked in television adapting other people's stories for television programs. When she tried her hand at writing her own television program, her producer suggested that with some added length it would make a wonderful novel. This novel became her first book, The Bronze Trumpeter, which was published in 1975.

Nimmo conducts a simple life of writing. She lives in an old water mill in Wales and begins her day of writing only after the chickens, rabbits, and cats have all been fed. She writes her stories out in longhand, editing as she goes. Then, once her manuscript is complete, she types it up on a computer for her publisher's review. During the summer she puts down her pencil to help her husband run a summer school at their home.

Redundant sources

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About the author (1998, 2007)

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Google books: About the author (1998); one 2007 is identical; one 2011 is barely biographical at all 

2012-12-20 redundant except where wrong (firstborn, leave BBC, first novel)

Wee Web

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Nimmo at TheWeeWeb 

2012-12-20 utterly redundant

HarperCollins

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Nimmo at Harper Collins 

2012-12-20 redundant except bi-lingual children

UNAVAILABLE [2] --evidently this interview is no longer available; accessed 2004-07-26 as an important source for EWB

Encyclopedia of World Biography

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Nimmo at ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD BIOGRAPHY[2]

far fetched gory tales in her teens, mysteries

uncle's chicken farm ages 5-7, learned to read there age 9 boarding school theater company, three years [early 1960s] 1963 amalfi italy

producer encouraged her to make a novel out of The Bronze Trumpeter, based on her time in Italy. Set in Sicily 1915

preschool 1983 return to writing

Magician 

Gwydion --the Gwydion?
Gwyn 10 to "turning 14" at the beginning?
Nia his sister and middle of seen siblings?

Ned & Nell kelpie

Charlie Bone

Themes (motifs?): Talking animals, whether stuffed, stone, or real

Family strife

Nimmo's children are grown now, but she remains busy at her home in Llangynyw, which is named Henllan Mill. She and her husband run a summer art academy which includes lodgings and meals. She finds it hard to write during these weeks when the guest-students are around, but described it as a kind of vacation from the necessary discipline of being a full-time writer. "It's a mental break I suppose," she said in the interview that appeared on the HarperCollins Web site, "which is sometimes a good thing."

Sources:

St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers. Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 1996.
Gale Contemporary Authors {subscription required}
HarperCollins 2004 interview no longer available

"Children's Notes." Publishers Weekly (July 12, 2004): p. 65.

JENNY's BIOGRAPHY

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[ref name=JN] [3] crucial espy 1974/75, 1982/83

Oxford Encyclopedia of CL

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[4] (2006)

Nimmo, Jenny

(1944–), British author. Solitary children, family mysteries, and Welsh landscapes and legends figure frequently in Nimmo's fantasies, such as The Snow Spider Trilogy (1986–1989) and the Children of the Red King series, which started with Midnight for Charlie Bone (2002). Nimmo was producing and writing for the children's television series Jackanory when she wrote her first novel, The Bronze Trumpeter (1974), in which a Sicilian boy, Paolo, meets some commedia dell'arte players while his father is fighting in World War I. That war is also at the heart of a ghost story set in the present, The Rinaldi Ring (1999), which is rich in mystery and literary allusion. Conservation is a theme of Ultramarine (1990), its sequel Rainbow and Mr Zed (1992), and, for younger readers, The Owl-Tree (1997), which, like The Snow Spider, won a Smarties Award. The picture books Gwion and the Witch (1996) and Branwen (1997), illustrated by Jac Jones, retell Welsh myths.

Peter Bramwell

Life

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Jenny Nimmo was born in Windsor, England.[3][4] She was an only child and her father, a physicist, died when she was five. For a few years she lived on her uncle's chicken farm in Surrey, where she learned to read.[3][2] After a few years at an unpleasant prep school,[3] she went to a boarding school in Surrey from age nine.[3][2]

As a child she was a voracious reader, which inspired her to write her own stories to share with friends.[5] She recalled about 40 years later for a HarperCollins interviewthat there were far-fetched, gory, murder mysteries that teachers discouraged as trash.[2]

At 14 or 16 she left boarding school for the theatrical world, where she spent five years. She studied and worked for Theater South East, then traveled with a repertory company, but failed to get work in London.[3]

For part of 1963 she was a governess in Amalfi Italy, which inspired her first book a decade later.[3] She joined the BBC as photographic researcher and worked there about ten years in various jobs, eventually including the adaptation of prose stories for television.[3] She worked on an idea of her own for a TV script, which a producer re-directed to be her first book.[3]

In 1974 Nimmo married David Wynn Millward, a Welsh artist and illustrator. Their first child was born in 1975 and thence she left BBC.[3] They moved more than once but settled in Wales permanently after their third child was born in 1980.[3] She returned to writing in 1983 when her youngest (Gwen) entered pre-school[2] and has been a full-time writer since all the children left home.[3]

Millward inherited a mill in Llangynyw, east-central Wales, where they have made their home and, since 1982, run the Henllan Mill Summer School of Painting & Drawing.[3][2] The school (in 2012, two weeks during July) includes a residential program with lodging and meals.[2] And Nimmo as cook.[goodreads]

Year-round they live with chickens, rabbits, and cats. Beside their care, Nimmo writes and edits manuscripts.[5] She keeps up with fans, tours, and visits fairs and schools.[3]


Millward is the writer or illustrator of a few published books himself, including at least four collaborations with Nimmo (1994 to 2000; marked (‡) below).[1] Nimmo and their younger daughter Gwen Millward have collaborated on one picture book written by Jenny and illustrated by Gwen, The Beasties (Egmont UK, 2010).[6] Gwen's first published book as both writer and illustrator was Bear and Bird (Egmont, September 2012).[7][8]


Writer

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The snow spider : teachers' resource book Aylesbury: Ginn, 1996 (Novel ideas) Gill Friel Jenny Nimmo 9780602270858 14pp

An interview with Jenny Nimmo". WorldCat. --Wendy Cooling London: Mammoth, 1999 Telling tales 9780749738624 60pp

"Part of a series of interviews with popular children's authors. This interview with Jenny Nimmo is aimed at children in the top year of primary school and the first year of secondary school. She tells of her childhood, family, home town, schooldays and writing career."

Nimmo wrote fiction as a girl but she was discouraged by "a lot of people", especially teachers, who considered it "rubbish".[EWB] quoting HarperCollins interview.

In the early 1970s, while she worked for the BBC show Jackanory, she developed one of her own ideas as a prospective TV script

Her/the producer discouraged the tv program, encouraged her to make it a novel "and so I did", she recalled for HarperCollins. Set in Sicily 1915 it features a lonely boy, with a hostile governess, who is befriended by a statue in the villa garden.[EWB] ("Talking animals, whether stuffed, stone, or real" recur in her stories, often as central characters[EWB] family strife too [EWB]

--publ a few weeks before her firstborn, inspired by her experience in Italy.[3]


From 1969 to 1971 Nimmo was a writer for Jackanory, a long-running BBC television series comprising 15-minute episodes in which a professional actor reads aloud to children, sometimes with a still illustration. IMDb credits her with 40 episodes, or eight weekly "stories".[9][a]

first book expanded from a prospective tv program

Angus & Robertson published her first book in January 1975.[10] The Bronze Trumpeter originated as the script for a prospective programme.[5] It features a neglected and lonely child with a harsh governess and a magical statue in the garden.[11]


Tatty Apple was first, published by (Methuen) Pied Piper; Magnet 

--about a boy with a magical green rabbit who first brings him blame for but finally saves the family[FF]
--illus. Priscilla Lamont 9780416502800 89pp ; 9780416525007

"Tatty Apple". WorldCat.

then The Snow Spider (Methuen) Pied Piper

Her second book was published by Methuen in 1984, Tatty Apple, which Nimmo calls "a science fiction fantasy set in the wilds of the Yorkshire countryside".[11]

After her children were in school she wrote The Snow Spider, published October 1986 in Methuen's Pied Piper series.[10]

The Bodigulpa (Pan McMillan, 2001 ISBN 0333949978) (Shock Shop), Nimmo, illus. David Roberts

Beside The Stone Mouse (1993, commended runner up), Griffin's Castle (1994) and Rinaldi's Ring (1999) made the Carnegie Medal shortlist.


"Solitary children, family mysteries, and Welsh landscapes and legends"[OxfC]

"The picture books Gwion and the Witch (1996) and Branwen (1997), illustrated by Jac Jones, retell Welsh myths."[OxfC]

The Magician Trilogy

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(The) Snow Spider Trilogy : RH Australia, Oxford Encyclopedia of CL

EWB quotes St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers: "a stunning achievement. Nimmo explores Gwyn's dual existence as ancient magician and young boy through five years, by turns showing his enthusiasm and weariness for his role as his awareness grows, and also his final acceptance of what he is."

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Li-Ou/Nimmo-Jenny.html#ixzz2FiRarwgV


Scholastic, the current U.S. publisher, reports Grade Level Equivalent nearly 5, thus children age 10/11 if they read at typical grade level.

"It borrowed many elements from an old Welsh saga, the Mabinogion, for the modern-day plot."[EWB]

"Gwyn is the descendant of Gwydion, a powerful magician, but the family's gifts have grown weaker over the generations."[EWB]

[5]quoting the TV adaptation (is this from the book?): 

"Time to find out if you are a magician, Gwydion Gwyn"
Time to remember your ancestors,
Math, Lord of Gwynedd, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy

"magic and fantasy intrude in the everyday life of a family tense with emotion" from the DVD (4-part adaptation of The Snow Spider)

Chestnut Soldier - four years after his ninth birthday (4-part adaptation)

Ned & Nell - fantasy/psychological thriller for teen readers

Charlie Bone and the Red King

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Her best-known work may be Children of the Red King, also known as the Charlie Bone series or Red King series, in which Charlie Bone's magical talent embroils him in the sinister intrigues of his new school. Total sales are in the millions.[5] As of 2006, Charlie Bone titles had been published in nine languages other than British and American English and translations into eleven other languages were in progress.[12][b] Originally it was the Red King Quintet after which Nimmo contracted for a new trilogy.[13] The story climaxes in the fifth book and again in the eighth.


The Red King's supernatural powers have been inherited piecemeal by some of his numerous descendants, for thousands of years --the socalled "endowed", typically with one talent each. In the present time of Children of the Red King, some of the bad descendants control Bloor's Academy that endowed children attend among others. There are ten endowed students with different talents.

Recently there is a new series set in the Charlie Bone universe: Chronicles of the Red King.[14] It features the Red King himself, thousands of years before Charlie Bone's present.

The prequel series features Timoken, the future Red King as a young man. Reviewing the second of two Chronicles extant (through 2012), Kirkus sharply criticises the work for the protagonist's "generic 'African'" origin (evidently somewhere leopards were native in his time). And for powers that are simply too great: "such overwhelming powers that all the threats and tasks with which he is faced are but momentary challenges".[15]

(As i read K) Nimmo does a good job of developing links between Timoken and his distant descendants --that is, prequel-ing the Children series-- but the

Awards

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SFAwards -- none

Beside winning the TnO and Smarties Prizes for The Snow Spider, Nimmo won a 1997 Smarties Prize in ages category 6–8 years for The Owl Tree.

The Stone Mouse was a commended runner up for the Carnegie Medal in Literature, recognising the year's best British children's book.

Griffin's Castle and The Rinaldi Ring made the Carnegie Medal shortlist.


page counts

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page counts for some book-edition records at ISFDB 
  (first edition unless dated)
  159 Bronze Trumpeter
  183 Griffin's Castle --YA fantasy -ISFDB (same as Children and Magician series and Rainbow)
   96 Witch's Tears
  186 Rinaldi Ring -- young-adult ghost story -ISFDB
  111 Night of the Unicorn
  245 Milo's Wolves --teen urban fantasy -ISFDB
   81 Bodigulpa 
  128 Dragon's Child (2008) --what? -- mistakenly called a first edition its 1997

Nimmo calls only the four longer "novels" --along with Ultramarine (1990) Rainbow and Mr Zed (1992) [no US eds., evidently 200+ in first eds.] 

   96 The Owl Tree (2004)
   64 The Stone Mouse

Delilah 95 127 156 --juvenile -ISFDB

Notes

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[c]

  1. ^ Six stories "adaptation" and two stories "written by" Nimmmo, namely "Russian Folk Tales" (aired October 1970) and Richard the Lion-Heart" (aired May 1971).
  2. ^ Nimmo displays (copyright 2006) book covers for three to five volumes in each of nine foreign languages and six volumes in the British and American editions. She listed Greek, Portuguese, Dutch, Serbian, Croatian, Norwegian, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Turkish and Romanian.
  3. ^ The eight Charlie Bone and three Snow Spider books are her 11 works most widely held in WorldCat participating libraries. Number 12 is her first Charlie Bone prequel.

kirkus reviews (10 total)

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  • "THE SNOW SPIDER by Jenny Nimmo". Kirkus Reviews 1 July 1987
  • "ORCHARD OF THE CRESCENT MOON by Jenny Nimmo". Kirkus Reviews 1 August 1989
  • "THE CHESTNUT SOLDIER by Jenny Nimmo". Kirkus Reviews 30 May 1991
  • + ULTRAMARINE by Jenny Nimmo". Kirkus Reviews 1 March 1992 --kelpie lore and family conflict inclg unknown identities (11-14) 192pp
  • + THE WITCHES AND THE SINGING MICE by Jenny Nimmo"]. Kirkus Reviews 1 September 1993 illus ANgela Barrett (6-10) 32pp --adaptation of folklore, cats save Highland village from witches to set impossible tasks
  • + "GRIFFIN'S CASTLE by Jenny Nimmo". Kirkus Reviews 1 April 1997 --a neglected child with supernatural servants who sometimes oppose her (10-12) 198pp
  • ++ SOMETHING WONDERFUL 1 August 2001, illus Debbie Boon (2-5) 32pp
  • (pan) Midnight 1 March 2003
  • + PIG ON A SWING 15 November 2003, illus Caroline Uff (2-4) 32pp
  • (pan pan) Ravenglass 1 June 2012

Note the ten (1987 to 2012) include three picture books of 32 pages (one standard length) with different illustrators

References

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ref name=Henllan

[6] [14] [1]

  1. ^ a b c "Millward, David Wynn". WorldCat. Retrieved 16 December 2012.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "Jenny Nimmo Biography". [2004]. Encyclopedia of World Biography. notablebiographies.com. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Jenny's Biography". Copyright 2006. Jenny Nimmo's Official Website (jennynimmo.me.uk). Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  4. ^ "Jenny Nimmo". Contemporary Authors Online. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 23 February 2004. Retrieved 22 January 2006. (subscription required)
  5. ^ a b c d "Jenny Nimmo". Scholastic: Teachers. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  6. ^ a b "The beasties" (first edition). WorldCat. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  7. ^ Gwen Millward: Welcome to my Website. Gwen Millward. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  8. ^ "Millward, Gwen". WorldCat. Retrieved 16 December 2012.
  9. ^ Jenny Nimmo at IMDb. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
  10. ^ a b Jenny Nimmo at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  11. ^ a b "Jenny's Books" (directory). Copyright 2006. Jenny Nimmo's Official Website. Retrieved 19 October 2012.
  12. ^ "Welcome to the Charlie Bone Page". Jenny Nimmo's Official Website. Copyright 2006. Retrieved 15 June 2012.
  13. ^ "New Charlie Bone trilogy for Egmont". The Bookseller 29 July 2005, p. 15. Retrieved 22 January 2006 via InfoTrac.
  14. ^ a b Charlie Bone Universe series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 26 April 2012. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
  15. ^ "THE STONES OF RAVENGLASS by Jenny Nimmo". Kirkus Reviews 15 May 2012. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
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