Martin Jenkins

I was born in Surrey in 1959 and grew up moving between Spain, Ireland, and Kent before studying at Cambridge University. Before I turned to writing full time, I spent roughly ten years as a conservation biologist at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, then went freelance in 1990, working with organizations including WWF and various UN agencies on projects that took me around the world investigating everything from orchid smuggling in Germany to the chameleon trade in Madagascar.

I moved into children's publishing after Walker Books invited me to advise on their Animals at Risk series, and I've since written more than fifty books, most published by Walker Books in the UK and Candlewick Press in the US. My natural history and conservation titles include The Emperor's Egg, Can We Save the Tiger?, Ape, Chameleons Are Cool, Fabulous Frogs, Puffin, A Walk Through the Rainforest, and Life: The First Four Billion Years. I've also written prose retellings of two illustrated classics, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver and Don Quixote, both with artwork by Chris Riddell. The Emperor's Egg won the Times Junior Information Book of the Year Award, and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver won the 2004 Kate Greenaway Medal. I split my time between Cambridge and London.