Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna, but when the Nazis came to power her family fled to England and she was sent to boarding school. She became a writer while bringing up her four children, and her bestselling novels have been published around the world. Journey to the River Sea won the Smarties Gold Medal and was shortlisted for both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. Some of her other young fiction titles include The Secret of Platform 13, Which Witch? and The Great Ghost Rescue. Eva died peacefully in October 2010 at the age of eighty-five.