Obituary: Children's author Pat Moon, Norwich, dies aged 76

But the extent of the late author’s creativity runs throughout the entirety of her Norwich home, built at the turn of the 20th century, which she shared with her husband, David.  

From designing and decorating the internal murals to cultivating a garden worthy of an award – despite there not being a single blade of glass – it is clear to see how much the London-born author fell in love with both her home and life in Norwich. 

And thankfully, the Moons' home would go on to become a place of comfort and stability as tragically, in 2007, Pat was diagnosed with the rare neurological and degenerative condition Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA). 

Also known as Benson's syndrome, the late author Sir Terry Pratchett also suffered with the same condition. 

Sadly for Pat, and many of her young fans, it meant the career of this popular writer was cut short, along with her life at the age of 76. 

The second-born of four, Pat was born on August 27, 1946, and lived in a house with both her immediate and extended family in Bromley, Greater London. 

She left school at 15 and soon after her 16th birthday, she moved in with a friend to West Wickham in the south-east of the city. 

Here, at Park Langley Youth Club, she met David. The pair would go on to celebrate 61 years of marriage. 

The couple married in July 1966 and after working for some years - Pat as a house mother in a children’s home and David as a laboratory technician – they decided to return to full-time education to train as teachers. 

Together they arrived at Newton Park College in Bath, now part of Bath University, becoming its first married couple there. 

After graduating, they started teaching and moved several times across the country as their children arrived; Daisy (b. 1973), Sam (b. 1975), and Ben (b. 1979). 

In 1987, with David taking up the role of an HMI (Her Majesty's Inspector), the family moved to Norwich with every intention of retiring to Bath. They never made it back, instead falling in love with Nelson’s County.

Pat taught at Falcon Middle School, now Falcon Junior School, in Sprowston, but left to become a full-time writer. 

It was because of her family’s insistence that she reluctantly entered a short story writing competition advertised by the Sunday Times in 1989. 

She won and was awarded an all-expenses-paid weekend at the Hay-on-Wye book festival where she was spotted by the book agent, Rosemary Sandberg. 

With a never-ending stream of ideas, she began to write. 

In 1991 she wrote a collection of poems and prose for the Friends of the Earth charity publication, Earth Lines. The anthology highlighted a range of environmental hazards and went on to sell thousands of copies worldwide. 

Then in 1993, her first novel, a mystery entitled Double Image, was published. 

She continued writing two books a year for several different publishers, and never had a manuscript rejected. She published more than 20 books, appeared in multiple anthologies, and her work was translated and published across the globe.   

The awards, and fan mail, soon followed. 

She was shortlisted for the Nestlé Smarties Children's Book Prize (1993), listed in the Writers’ Guild’s Best Children’s Book of the Year (1994), and appeared in the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize with her Norwich-based novel, The Spying Game. 

She was also listed in the Guardian’s Hundred Best Books of the Year (1998) and won the shorter novel category with her book, Little Dad.

The overall winner that year was the author J. K. Rowling with her debut, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The pair were interviewed together on Blue Peter and became friends.

Another of Pat's works, The Trouble with Mice (1993), was a featured text in SATs exams. 

In 2021, Bath University awarded her with an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree, of which she remained unaware. 

Pat Moon died at home surrounded by her family on Wednesday, June 28.