Joyce Dunbar
| Joyce Dunbar | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1944 (age 72–73) Scunthorpe, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Children's books |
| Website | |
| joycedunbar |
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Joyce Dunbar (born 1944) is an English writer. She primarily writes books for children, and has published over seventy books. Dunbar is perhaps best known for Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Sleep, This Is The Star, and the Mouse And Mole series. She is the mother of the children's writer-illustrator Polly Dunbar.
Dunbar was born in 1944 in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and is one of four children. Her father was a steel-worker and her mother was a fishing net maker. She grew up in Lincolnshire.
Dunbar attended Goldsmiths College in London, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English. After that, she did several jobs, working as a nanny, a waitress, a barmaid, and a salesperson. In 1968, she started working as a teacher in a college drama department of Stratford-on-Avon, England. However, due to her gradual loss of hearing, Dunbar had to stop her teaching career and in 1989, she became a full-time writer.
Dunbar has two grown up children: Ben, a fashion photographer and Polly, an author illustrator. Dunbar currently lives in Norwich.
Dunbar published her first children's book at age 35. In 1985, Dunbar published Mundo and the Weather-Child – a novel about the imaginary friend of a deaf child, which helped her become a runner up for the Guardian Fiction Award. In 1990, her book A Bun for Barney was made into an interactive video game by BBC Multimedia Corporation.
In 1998, she wrote Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Sleep, which is recommended as a book to help children feel secure. In 2002 Dunbar did a book tour in the United States to promote this book. Her 2005 picture book Shoe Baby, illustrated by her daughter Polly, was made into a puppet show and is part of the 2006 Brighton Festival.
Dunbar most well-known series, Mouse and Mole, has been adapted into a 26-part television animation series by Grasshopper Productions, with voices lent by Alan Bennett and Richard Briers.
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