Georgia Byng

Selected works include: • The Sock Monsters (Orion Publishing Group, 1995) • Jack's Tree, illustrated by Lucy Su (A & C Black, 2000) • The Ramsbottom Rumble, illustrated by Helen Flook (Black, 2001) • Pancake Face, illustrated by Mike Phillips (Barrington Stoke, 2014) • The Girl With No Nose, illustrated by Gary Blythe (Barrington Stoke, 2016) • Albi, The Glowing Cow Boy (UCLan Books, 2023)

Byng's first published book was a comic-strip story that she wrote and illustraited – The Sock Monsters, about the small monsters who live in houses and eat people's socks. She followed this with Jack's Tree, a comic-strip book about a boy who saves a tree from being cut down. Her next book was The Ramsbottom Rumble, a short novel about two boys who save their grandmother from a con man. Byng's best-known work is Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism, a children's novel about a girl who finds a hypnotism book in the library and learns how to hypnotise people. This book was followed by Molly Moon’s Hypnotic Holiday, then Molly Moon Stops the World in which Molly learns how to stop time. In the next book, Molly Moon's Time Travel Adventure, Molly gets the gist of time travelling. In Molly Moon, Micky Minus and the Mind Machine she becomes a mind reader. In Molly Moon and the Morphing Mystery Molly uses her powers to morph into other forms, both people and animals. In the seventh Molly Moon book, Molly Moon and The Monster Music, Molly finds she is able to hypnotise people and animals by playing hypnotic music. Each of the Molly Moon series is set in a different place, from the UK to New York, to Los Angeles, then India (this one in the 19th century) to Switzerland in the future to Ecuador and Japan. Byng co-wrote the screenplay for Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism, the movie of her first book. After the Molly Moon books came Pancake Face, and The Girl with No Nose, and in January 2023, Albi, the Glowing Cow Boy, an illustrated novel for 8- to 12-year-olds about a calf who eats big white milk mushrooms, then becomes super-intelligent and escapes an abattoir. Like Byng's other books, this book travels across the world. Its protagonist, Albi champions compassion towards other beings and plant-based eating and this being a solution to climate change. Byng is with Caradoc King and Millie Hoskins at London literary agency United Agents.

• 2003: Sheffield Children's Book Award (for Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism) • 2004: Stockton Children's Book Award (for Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism) • 2004: Salford Children's Book Award (for Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism) • 2006: Massachusetts Children's Book Award (for Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism)