Lynne Reid Banks

Born in England in 1929, Lynne Reid Banks studied at the Queen's Secretarial College in London, as well as at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After she finsished with the Royal Academy, she wrote for the repertory stage and spent several years acting, like her Irish mother, who was also an actress. She later become one of the first two women television reporters in Britain, continuing for three years at that post.

In 1962, Banks moved to Israel and became a high-school English teacher at a kibbutz, a small, communial Jewish farm. It was in that country that she met and married her husband, Chaim Stephenson, with whom she had three sons. After nine years spent in Israel, she returned to England and now lives in a 300-year old farmhouse in Dorset with her husband. She writes full-time, traveling often and visitng schools both in England and abroad, with her best known work being perhaps The Indian in the Cupboard, a story which originated from bedtime stories she told to her own sons.

Her books include:

• The Indian in the Cupboard
• Return of the Indian
• The Secret of the Indian
• The Mystery of the Cupboard
• The Key to the Indian
• Melusine: A Mystery
• I, Houdini