He has won several honours including the Brandford Boase, the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize, British children's literature awards that recognise "year's best" books.
Peet grew up on a council estate in North Walsham, Norfolk, the eldest of three siblings, in a family that he describes as "emotionally impaired".
[3] He attended the Paston School[4] and spent one year at the University of Warwick studying English and American literature, but graduated later, eventually earning an M.A.
Cloud Tea Monkeys, a children's picture book written by Peet and his wife, is set in the Himalayas and based on a Chinese folktale.
For his first novel, Keeper (2003), Peet won the Branford Boase Award, which recognizes "the most promising book for seven-year-olds and upwards by a first time novelist.
"[9][10] For his second novel, Tamar (2005), he won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians, recognising the year's best children's book published in the U.K.[11][12] The Penalty (2007) was shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize and Peet won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Exposure (2008), a modern re-telling of Shakespeare's Othello.
[9][15] Susan Tranter wrote that "Mal Peet's work is notable for its refusal to submit to categories – the constraints which label what a book should be about, and who it should appeal to.
When he won the 2009 Guardian Award for the Othello-based Exposure, he told the sponsoring newspaper he felt that "football books for children were pretty much hey."