Francesca Isabella Simon (born 23 February 1955) is an American-born British author. She is most famous for writing the Horrid Henry series of children's books.
She is the daughter of screenwriter and playwright Mayo Simon.
Biography
Simon was born on 23 February 1955 in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up in California and studied at Yale University and Jesus College, Oxford, where she read medieval studies and Old English. Simon worked as a journalist, writing for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Mail on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph and Vogue (US). She is married to an English husband, Martin Stamp, and has one son called Joshua (born August 1989).
Simon was inspired to write by Anthony Trollope. She began to write children's books full-time in 1989. Simon is one of the UK's best-selling children's writers; Simon got the idea for Horrid Henry when she was asked by Judith Elliott, an editor at Orion Books, to write a story about a horrid child. She also wanted to write about sibling rivalry and families where one child was considered "perfect" and the other "horrid". Many of the books' stories were inspired by events from Simon's life and those of people that she knew, with additional ideas coming from her imagination.
Simon lives in London with her husband, Martin. Their Tibetan spaniel, Shanti, is memorialised in the short story "Shanti" that Simon wrote for inclusion in the Paws and Whiskers anthology by fellow author Jacqueline Wilson published in February 2014.
In the spring of 2019, the Royal Opera House staged an opera based on Simon's book The Monstrous Child, about the Norse god of the dead, Hel, as an angry teenager. The opera is composed by Gavin Higgins with libretto by Simon.
Selected works
<!-- distinguish children's picture books from others afap -->
- Horrid Henry series, illustrated by Tony Ross, Orion Books, 1994 to 2015, 2019
- – longlisted for the Guardian Prize, 2014
Honours and awards
In 2008, Simon won the British Book Award for British Book Award The Children's Book of the Year with Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman. She is the first American to win this award.