Clare Bell facts for kids

Clare Bell is a British author who lives in the United States. She is famous for her exciting fantasy novels for young adults, especially the Ratha series. These books are all about smart, prehistoric big cats. These amazing cats are like a mix of pumas, cheetahs, and lions. They are based on ancient fossil creatures, like the ancestors of the saber-tooth cat.

Her first book, Ratha's Creature, came out in 1983. Clare Bell loves big cats so much that she also wrote Tomorrow's Sphinx. This book features cheetahs in ancient and future Egypt. Another book, The Jaguar Princess, tells the story of a jaguar woman in ancient Aztec Mexico. She also enjoys writing about flying! In People of the Sky, Pueblo Indians travel to another planet. There, they learn to ride winged aliens. Clare Bell has also written short stories for collections like Witch World and CatFantastic. These collections are about cats and magic.

Recently, Bell wrote Ratha's Island. This was a special, short novel made for Twitter. Twitter is a website where posts are very short, usually 140 characters or less. This makes them easy to read on cellphones. Ratha's Island was one of the first "Twitter novels" for young adults. It was very popular. It is similar to "cellphone novels" that are popular in Japan. The story ran on Twitter from March to May 2009. It explored the idea of six-legged prehistoric mammals. These creatures evolved on a faraway island.

About Clare Bell

Clare Bell was born in 1952 in Hitchin, England. Her family moved to the United States in 1957. Growing up in Palo Alto, California, she became very interested in prehistoric mammals. She loved looking at Charles R. Knight's paintings in books about ancient life.

After studying at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she used her skills in biology and chemistry. She worked for the US Geological Survey. She helped study water and rocks. She even worked on a research ship called the Polaris. Later, she went back to college at the University of California, Davis. She then became an electrical engineer at IBM.

How Her Books Began

Clare Bell was inspired by a book called Sirius. This book was about a sheepdog with human-level intelligence. She started writing Ratha's Creature, her first novel. It was published in 1983. This book won two important awards: the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award and the PEN United States Literary Award. Ratha's Creature was even made into a TV show. It aired as a CBS Storybreak episode in the late 1980s.

Her Work with Electric Cars

In 1990, Clare Bell left IBM to become a full-time writer. She also became very interested in electric vehicles. She even changed a VW Beetle into an electric car! She started building, racing, and fixing electric cars. From 1992 to 1999, she was the editor for the Electric Auto Association's newsletter. This is a club for electric car fans in the US.

She also raced electric cars as part of the Women's Electric Racing Team. They competed in races in Phoenix, Arizona, from 1993 to 1997. Her experience with electric cars even became a job. She worked as an electric vehicle engineer for different companies until 2003.

Ratha's Return

Clare Bell was surprised to find that her books from twenty years ago still had many fans. People kept them alive on the Internet. The first four Ratha books were re-released in 2007. A new book, Ratha's Courage, came out in 2008. In 2013, a project started to create a graphic novel e-book of the first Ratha title.

Today, Clare Bell and her husband live in the hills of California. They have built their own systems for solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.

List of Works

Series Novels

• Ratha, or The Books of the Named
  • Ratha's Creature (1983)
  • Clan Ground (1984)
  • Ratha and Thistle-chaser (1990)
  • Ratha's Challenge (1991)
  • Ratha's Courage (Imaginator Press, 2008)
• Ancient Tahiti, by Bell and M. Coleman Easton, under joint pseudonym Clare Coleman
  • Daughter of the Reef (1992)
  • Sister of the Sky (1993)
  • Child of the Dawn (1994)

Other Novels

• Tomorrow's Sphinx (1986)
• People of the Sky (1989)
• The Jaguar Princess (1993)

Short Stories

• "The Hunting of Lord Etsalian's Daughter" in Tales of the Witch World
• "The Damcat" in Catfantastic
• "Bomber and the Bismarck" in the Catfantastic series
• "A Tangled Tahitian Tale" in the Catfantastic series
• "Bonechewer's Legacy" (2009) in Firebirds Soaring – Ratha series
• "Ratha's Island" (2009), published on Twitter – Ratha series

Television Adaptations

• "Ratha's Creature" (1985), an episode of CBS Storybreak