Biography I am a Dutch writer of books for Teens and Young Adults. I went to college to become a teacher, after which I studied child psychology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1980 I began writing plays for schoolchildren. When several of those plays were successfully published, I decided to write children's books. In 1992 my first book was published and since then I have published almost a book every year. I have alternated between writing books for Teens and Young Adult readers. In April of 2014 my 20th book appeared at Clavisbooks: Voor eeuwig de jouwe (For ever yours). It is a book for Young Adults. Two of my books have won awards of the Dutch Children's Jury and my last book was nom-inated for the Hebban Crimezone Young Adult award 2014. It also was nominated for "best book of 2014" by the regional libraries. A year ago I got the idea to translate one of my books, AL HET WATER VAN DE ZEE, in English. It is a book about bullying, a global problem. Many Dutch readers of this book told me that the story had touched them deeply and that it had changed their behavior. I hope it has the same result with English speaking readers. The Dutch title, AL HET WATER VAN DE ZEE, doesn't translate well into English, because it is part of an expression. So I had to come up with a new one. It became: THE FLIGHT OF THE SEAGULL. This title covers even better the content of the book. Because my English is not impeccable, I got help form a few good friends, who blue-pencilled my manuscript. For more information please visit my website: www.greetbeukenkamp.nl. Unfortunately, most of it is only available in Dutch. But if you want to ask me something about the book it is possible to send me an e-mail via this website. A funny review of an American young woman about one of my Dutch books: ONTVOERD (Kidnapped) that I came across on Goodreads: "Suprisingly a really really good book. Suprisingly because Dutch People usually can't write. I read this when I was still a kid about 11 or something. This book was so thrilling and scary at the time, it kept me up at night hiding under my blanket. I, in fact, loved it so much I'd read it more that six times. Though it's been a while and I wonder if my opinion has changed, but I doubt it. It's definitely a must-read." This review gave me the idea to translate also this book. The title will be: KIDNAPPED. Tomorrow I'll go on with the second chapter....