Jenny Valentine

Jenny Valentine (born 1970) is a British children's novelist. For her first novel and best-known work, Finding Violet Park (HarperCollins, 2007), she won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.

Valentine lives in Glasbury-on-Wye, Wales with her husband singer/songwriter Alex Valentine, with whom she runs a health food shop in nearby Hay-on-Wye.

HarperCollins has published Valentine's novels both in Britain and, usually one year later, in America. Finding Violet Park (2007) was re-titled Me, The Missing and The Dead in the US (2008). Beside winning the Guardian Prize it made the shortlist (seven finalists that year) for the annual Carnegie Medal, which the British librarians confer upon the year's best children's book published in the UK Valentine became one of the most talked about authors in the country. Basque, Catalan, and Italian-language translations were published in 2008, followed by Dutch, French, German, Slovenian, Spanish, and Norwegian.

Her second novel, Broken Soup, was published in January 2008. It is her most critically acclaimed book to date and was shortlisted for the 2008 Waterstone's Children's Book Prize and the 2008 Costa Book Children's Book Award, and longlisted for the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize. By 2010 it had been published in Dutch and German-language translations.

"Ten Stations", a short story prequel to Finding Violet Park, was included among 2009 World Book Day publications. That year Valentine also inaugurated the series of short stories for young children entitled Iggy and Me.

Valentine's third novel, The Ant Colony, was released in 2009. By 2011 it had been published in Dutch and German-language translations.

Her fourth novel, The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight, was based in her hometown Hay-on-Wye. It was also her fourth novel nominated for the Carnegie Medal: roughly, one of the year's top forty children's books published in the UK, in the esteem of librarians. By 2011 it had been published in Dutch-language translation.

Valentine annually takes part in the Hay Festival but has not announced any forthcoming children's books.

• Doppelganger (HarperCollins, 2010)[1]
• Iggy & me
• Iggy & me: The happy birthday (#2, HarperCollins, 2010)[2]
• Iggy & me on holiday (#3, HarperCollins, 2010)[3]
• Iggy & me and the baby (#4, HarperCollins, 2011)[4]