Chris d'Lacey

Chris d'Lacey was born in Malta but moved with his family to Leicester, England, when he was a child. Growing up, he loved to play soccer and appear in school plays. In fact, his book The Prompter is based on his own experience in a school production of Peter Pan. He was too excitable for an actual role in the play, so his teacher made him the "prompter," who helps the actors when they forget their lines. Then, two days before opening night, one of the actors came down with the chicken pox, and d'Lacey found himself playing the role of Captain Hook!

As a teenager, d'Lacey wanted to be rock star like David Bowie. He wrote songs, played the guitar, and even dyed his hair funny colors. Songwriting eventually lead to creative writing when d'Lacey wrote a short story about polar bears to go with the stuffed polar bear he bought his wife for Christmas.

His first children's novel, Fly Cherokee, Fly, like The Prompter, is based on a true story. d'Lacey found an injured pigeon in a park and nursed it back to health. For the next 14 years, it lived in a birdhouse in his backyard. (You can learn more about Cherokee in our video interview.) His best-known books are the two series of books about dragons — The Dragons of Wayward Crescent, with friendly beasts for younger children and The Dragon Chronicles, which follows the adventures of David Rain after he realizes that he's sharing a house with some live dragons.

Chris worked for 28 years in thebiology laboratory at the University of Leicester inLeicester, England. It was there, during tea breaks, that he began to try his hand at writing.He still lives in Leicester with his wife,but now does his writing at home — full-time — when he's not outvisiting schools.