David Bedford is an acclaimed author of over 70 books for children, and has an international reputation as a speaker, creative writing tutor, and nurturer of children's reading.Born in England, David worked as a biologist for 10 years, in both the UK and USA. With colleagues at Stanford University, his work was to invent new ways to make antibiotics and other life-saving medicines.Among David's children's books are the best-sellers Big Bear, Little Bear, Mole's In Love and Roo the Roaring Dinosaur. Altogether, David's books have been translated in more than 35 countries around the world, from Iceland to Australia, Brazil to Thailand, and many places in between.His latest title, Roo the Roaring Dinosaur, is the result of a 6-year collaboration with friend and illustrator of the popular 'Lettice the Rabbit' series, Mandy Stanley. David writes, 'Roo has been our pet project - our Friday project. We wanted to develop something slowly, something different to our other books. And we wanted to learn from each other, and see just how good we could make it. Only at the very last stage did we involve a publisher - and, luckily for us, Simon & Schuster UK jumped at it.'In 'The Team' series, David used his training as a scientist to invent a soccer-playing robot character in a successful series of nine short novels.David regularly visits schools to motivate children to read, and teach story-writing techniques to children and adults (usually teachers). He was one of the first Patrons of Reading in the UK, and is a British Council trained Active Citizen in 'boy's reading'. David visits schools as far afield as Spain, Jordan and China.Working with leading UK charity, the National Literacy Trust, David helps to deliver the Premier League Reading Stars programme in schools, motivating children to read through their interest in soccer.David Bedford lives by the sea in Norfolk, England, with his wife and two children.For more info about David's books and activities, see www.davidbedford.co.uk