Tonke Dragt

Tonke Dragt was born in Jakarta in 1930 and spent most of her childhood in Indonesia. When she was twelve, she was interned in a camp run by the Japanese occupiers, where she wrote her very first book using begged and borrowed paper. Her family moved to the Netherlands after the war, and after studying at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague Dragt became an art teacher. She published her first book in 1961, followed a year later by The Letter for the King, which won the Children’s Book of the Year award and has been translated into sixteen languages and sold over 1 million copies. The movie based on the book was released in 2008. Dragt was awarded the State Prize for Youth Literature in 1976 and was knighted in 2001. She is considered to be the greatest Dutch female writer for children. Pushkin Children’s Books publish Letter for the King in November.