Jenny Robson was born in South Africa and now lives in Botswana. She has won many important awards for her children's books, including the UNESCO Prize for Children's and Young People's Literature in the Service of Tolerance. Her delightful children's book Balaclava Boy was first published in South Africa, but it was when they came across the German translation, published in Switzerland, that Little Island fell in love with it and decided to make it available to English-speaking readers in this part of the world.