Waddell, Martin

Martin Waddell always wanted to be a professional soccer player. After having played for junior teams in Ireland in his teens, he left school at fifteen and held a variety of jobs, including working at a publishing company and as a night switchboard operator for a taxi company.

Waddell is now one of the most prolific and successful contemporary children’s writers, with more than one hundred books to his credit, some of them under his pseudonym Catherine Sefton. His books have found him fans worldwide. Inspired by the candle-carrying bear in the Candlewick Press logo, “Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?” has received international acclaim by winning the Smarties Grand Prize and the Kate Greenaway Medal (U.K.), as well as Le Priz des Critiques de Livres pour Enfants (Belgium) and a 1992 Parents’ Choice Honor.

Martin Waddell believes that a picture-book story is “a script for performance to a very personally involved audience that wants to stop, ask questions, look, and point things out.” He feels that books should reach out to basic childhood emotions-fear of the dark (“Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?”), separation anxiety (“Owl Babies”), the desire to do things independently (“Sam Vole and His Brothers” and “Little Mo”)-feelings that directly relate to events and experiences in a young child’s life.

Waddell was inspired to write The Big Big Sea while planning a visit for a friend and her young daughter. He thought a nighttime walk on the beach near his home would be a perfect experience for both mother and child and would promote that special parent-child bond. After all, he notes, “the moments we share are the moments that stay with us.”

Martin is married, has three children, and lives in County Down, Northern Ireland.

-From Author Profile by Candlewick Press.

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