NEWS
Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2019 The headlines
PM’s days are numbered in Daugherty’s new YA spy-thriller series
YA thriller
C J Daughert is to return to YA writing, with a series of spy thrill-
C J DAUGHERTY’S LATEST NOVEL WAS INSPIRED IN PART BY THE POISONING OF SERGEI AND YULIA SKRIPAL IN SALISBURY
ers focused around the daughter of a British Prime Minister. Rights to Number 10, and three further titles in the series, were sold into five languages before the Bologna Children’s Book Fair: German (Oetinger), French (Robert Laffont), Spanish (Ediciones Urano), Hebrew (Books in the Atic) and Serbian (Laguna). The deals were conducted by Madeleine Milburn and rights director Liane-Louise Smith of the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency. The series is on simultaneous submission in the UK and US. Number 10 kicks off with “bright, rebellious” 16-year-old Gray Langtry, who has a fractious relationship with her PM mother and is struggling under the media spotlight. One night, while Gray is exploring the ancient tunnels under 10 Downing Street, she stumbles on a shady Russian
Bunzl’s walk on the Wild side to Usborne
Usborne has snapped up a Middle Grade standalone from The Cogheart Adventures author Peter Bunzl, inspired by the true story of a feral child brought to London by George I and raised at Kensington Palace. Usborne fiction editorial director Rebecca Hill acquired world rights to Magicborn from Jo Williamson at Antony Harwood. Bunzl was introduced to the story
of Peter the Wild Boy at a school event at Kensington Palace. The real-life Peter was found naked and unable to speak in a German forest in 1725; he
was brought to London and became a sensational public curiosity, written about by the likes of Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe. Bunzl’s tale is told through the eyes of Tempest, “a girl with a story as strange as Peter’s— and another one of the palace’s imprisoned curiosities”. Bunzl’s three Cogheart titles have
shifted almost 90,000 copies in the UK, and have been translated into 14 languages—but Usborne fiction rights executive Lauren Robertson said she hoped to hit 20 languages “soon after this year’s Bologna.”
Green dream for Leventhal as new Jewish-interest kids’ imprint launches
British indie publisher Greenhill Books is to make its first foray into children’s with Green Bean Books, a new imprint of Jewish-interest titles. Greenhill publisher Michael
Leventhal said the impetus for Green Bean was personal frustration at the lack of quality Jewish children’s books in English, particularly in the UK market. He said: “I have two young sons and have been really disap- pointed by [Jewish-interest] kids’ titles in the UK, most of which aren’t
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remotely inspiring or engaging. Tere are more books from the US market, but many of these aren’t quite right for Britain and are rather ham-fisted. In Hebrew or Russian [languages], there are some wonder- ful publishers doing great work. A canon of Jewish folk literature has been largely forgotten: I want to resurrect these stories.” Kicking off the list are picture
books aimed at readers aged four to eight: Shoham Smith and Vali Mintzi’s
revisited History
organisation bent on assassinat- ing her mother and installing a puppet in her place. Gray plunges headlong into danger to save her mother and foil the plot. Daughert is best known for
her YA romantic thriller Night School series, which has been translated into 22 languages and sold over a million units world- wide. For the past three years she has published an adult crime series, featuring intrepid reporter Harper McClain, with St Martin’s (US) and HarperCollins (UK). The decision to write a spy series was based on current events, Daughert said. She added: “We live in an age when Russian spies kill people on the streets of Salisbury using chemi- cal weapons, so there is much to explore. The series also looks at celebrit culture and what it is like to be the teenage daughter of the Prime Minister and to find yourself unexpectedly famous. Is celebrit a giſt? Or a trap?” Reporting Tom Tivnan
AS WELL AS BEING AN AUTHOR, PETER BUNZL IS A FILMMAKER AND BAFTA-WINNING ANIMATOR
Signs in the Well; Shlomo Abas and Omer Hoffman’s Te Sages of Chelm and the Moon; and Ori Elon and Menachem Halberstadt’s A Basket Full of Figs. Te last two are new takes on classic Jewish folktales, while Signs in the Well is about first-century scholar Rabbi Akiva. Greenhill is a military history
PUBLISHER AT GREENHILL BOOKS MICHAEL LEVENTHAL USUALLY SPECIALISES IN HISTORICAL TITLES
specialist, and Leventhal noted the children’s imprint “was a certainly a change from the Battle of the Bulge and books about snipers”. He added: “We were going to focus solely on picture books in translation, but I’ve just bought some YA and commis- sioned some English-language titles.”
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