- Philip Pullman in an interview with Powells.com (Weich 2003)
Pullman has one full brother, one step brother, one half sister and one half brother (Pullman 1993).
His father was in the Royal Air Force and was killed in action when Pullman was very young. His mother remarried and Philip stepfather was also a member of the Royal Air Force (Pullman 1993).
Because of his father and stepfather's occupations, Philip lived all over the world. He spent part of his childhood in Zimbabwe and Australia (Pullman 1993).
Philip began his love of comic books when his stepfather gave him a Superman comic. He still loves comics and his favorites are Batman, Superman, Superboy, Dick Tracy and Captain America (Pullman 1993).
He always loved to tell stories and when he shared a room with his younger brother he would make up stories at night to tell his brother (Pullman 1993).
He discovered his love of art and poetry when he was in high school and began writing stories in college (Pullman 1993).
He went to Exeter College in Oxford, but didn't really know what he wanted to do when he got out. He worked at a store in London that sold and rented men's formal wear and then he worked in a library for awhile. All the while, he was writing in his spare time (Pullman 1993).
He got married and his wife encouraged him to become a teacher. He went back to school for his teaching certificate and became a middle school teacher. He later became a professor at Westminster College (Pullman 1993).
His first published book was a novel for adults and didn't do very well. His first children's book was Count Karlstein (Pullman 1993).
He found his biggest success with the His Dark Materials series. The third in the series, The Amber Spyglass, was the first children's book ever to receive the Whitbread Book of the Year Award ( a very prestigious award given to a book by a British author) (Pullman 2003a)
He has two sons. One is a professional viola player. The other is in college and is also studying music (Pullman 2003a)
Philip loves playing the piano and composing. He also enjoys drawing and woodworking. He's carved a wooden horse for his first grandchild (Rabinovitch 2003).
He writes three pages everyday regardless of whether or not he has lots of ideas or no ideas at all (Pullman 1993).
He writes in a garden shet in his backyard. He writes until 1:45 pm and then takes a break to eat lunch and watch Neighbours (a British soap opera) (Guardian Unlimited Books 2003).
All information on this page and the following pages (not including links in the links section to other pages) is for a Juvenile Literature class at Texas Woman's University.