Katharine Applegate

Katherine Applegate was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then she has lived in Texas, Florida, California, Minnesota, Illinois, North Carolina, and after living in Pelago, Italy for a year, she moved back to Irvine, in Southern California. In 1997, she and her husband, Michael Grant, her co-author on many projects including Animorphs and Everworld, had their first child, a daughter named Clara. In 2003 they adopted a daughter, Julia, in China, and later, son Robert from Mozambique. Following the end of Remnants, Applegate took three years off. She is back at work and has written a picture book called Buffalo Storm, a middle reader novel called Home of the Brave and an early chapters series Roscoe Riley Rules with HarperCollins. Her book Home of the Brave has won the SCBWI 2008 Golden Kite Award for Best Fiction, the Bank Street 2008 Josette Frank Award, and is a Judy Lopez Memorial Award honor book.

Applegate won the 2013 Newbery Medal for The One and Only Ivan, illustrated by Patricia Castelao and published by HarperCollins. This annual award, granted by the American Library Association, recognizes the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children." The story is written from the viewpoint of a gorilla living in a glass cage in a shopping mall. According to the award committee, "Katherine Applegate gives readers a unique and unforgettable gorilla's-eye-view of the world that challenges the way we look at animals and at ourselves.

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