Narinder Dhami

Narinder Dhami (born in Wolverhampton on November 15, 1958) is a British children’s author.

Early life

Dhami's father was an Indian immigrant from the Punjab who arrived in the UK in 1954, and her mother is English.^[1] She grew up in a multi-cultural environment, with Asian Indian and western cultures both major influences in her life, and was educated at Wolverhampton Girls' High School and Birmingham University, where she graduated in English in 1980.

Career

Award winning children's author Narinder Dhami started working as a teacher, and for the next nine years she taught in primary and secondary schools in Essex and in the London borough of Waltham Forest. During this time, she began writing stories for teenage magazines, and contributed many photo-stories to the now-defunct Jackie magazine, published by DC Thomson.

Eventually, Narinder gave up teaching for a full-time writing job. For the last few years, she has been writing contemporary realistic fiction about children growing up in Britain. Her Babes quartet about three British Asian girls is extremely popular with girls between 9 and 14 years of age. She writes a wide range of children's books for pre-teens on other subjects and now increasingly for older teens too. Her characters reflect the British urban ethnic mix but the books discuss racism only when relevant as Narinder believes most younger children want to have fun when they read rather than be subjected to adult agendas.

Books for 2009 included a teen thriller 'Bang, Bang You're Dead!' May 2009, which won or was shortlisted for large number of book awards in 2010, and the first book in a series of six for 9+ readers called 'The Beautiful Game' about girls' football. A further 4 books in the series were published in 2010 and the last of the six appeared in Jan 2011.

Narinder Dhami is one of the two remaining authors of the internationally successful Rainbow Magic series, written under the name of Daisy Meadows. Her most famous and biggest selling book was 'Bend it Like Beckham', a novelisation of the film.

She now lives in Shropshire with her husband and her cats.^[1]

Bibliography

Around 200 books published to date. Key titles include the following:

• The Beautiful Game - Team Jasmin (Orchard 2010)
• The Beautiful Game - Golden Girl Grace (Orchard 2010)
• The Beautiful Game - Georgie's War (Orchard 2010)
• The Beautiful Game - Lauren's Best Friend (Orchard 2010)
• The Beautiful Game - Hannah's Secret (Orchard 2009)
• The New Adventures of the Wishing Chair (various) (Egmont)
• Bang, Bang, You're Dead! (Corgi Books)
• Angel Face (Collins)
• Changing Places (OUP)
• Annie’s Game
• Animal Crackers
• Bindi Babes
• Bollywood Babes
• Bhangra Babes
• Sunita’s Secret
• Dani’s Diary
• Bend it like Beckham
• Superstar Babes (2008)

All books published by Random House unless otherwise specified.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Narinder Dhami at randomhouse.com (accessed 25 March 2003)

External links

• NarinderDhami.com - official website

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Name	Dhami, Narinder
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Date of birth	November 15, 1958
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