First Favourite Stories Pack Award-winning team Pack by Allan Ahlberg (author), Eric Carle (author), Sam McBratney (author), and David Melling (author)

Allan has been delighting children of all ages for more than thirty years. Classic characters like Burglar Bill and The Jolly Postman have become firm favourites with a generation of children who are now reading them to their own offspring. Innovative, funny and moving, his work encompasses storybooks, picture books, easy readers, joke books and novels as well as poems.

Many of his books were collaborations with his wife, Janet, an illustrator, and they quickly became one of Britain’s leading author/illustrator teams.

Influenced by comics and cartoons, their perfect partnership went on to produce masterpieces including Peepo!, Each Peach Pear Plum and The Baby’s Catalogue.

Janet sadly died in 1994, but Allan has gone on to work with other illustrators and is still producing lots of new books.

Eric Carle was born of German parents. He was always drawn to America after his family moved to Stuttgart when he was six. Carle’s childhood years in Germany were traumatic; as an adult he would make “books for the child in me, books I had longed for.” It is no surprise that his style is characterised by an explosive use of colour. During the war, his art teacher showed him his hidden collection of banned “degenerate” art, including works by Picasso, Klee and Matisse. At 16, Carle began studying graphic art at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. Returning to New York in 1952, Carle built a successful career in advertising. In the mid 1960s, Carle decided to give up this career to become an illustrator and graphic designer. His first published work appeared in a cookery book. Soon afterwards, children’s book author Bill Martin asked him to illustrate the manuscript of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? The resulting book was an instant hit. Encouraged by this success, Carle began submitting ideas for his own books. One of these was “Willie The Worm”. His editor suggested that a caterpillar might prove a more endearing character – the rest is history.

First published in 1969, The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold over 29 million copies in more than 47 languages. Eric Carle has illustrated more than seventy books, and more than 88 million copies of his books have sold around the world.

David Melling is a best-selling picture book author and illustrator, best known for his hit Hugless Douglas books.

Before creating picture books, David worked as a photographer and as an animation artist for films including the much-loved Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs. He was born in Oxford and still lives near the city with his wife and two children. One of his most popular picture books The Tale of Jack Frost became an award-winning BBC1 animation, shown on Christmas Day.

He has been shortlisted for lots of awards, including the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal for his first book The Kiss That Missed.