Story Collections
Introduction
Titles
Introduction
These are all re-tellings except for Bump in the Night,
which is eight ghost stories, all written by me.
I seem to have
spent a lot of time writing the Bible! It started
with A First Bible Storybook for Dorling Kindersley and
after that I felt there were lots of good stories I hadn’t
had room to tell, so I wrote Parables, Miracles and Animals of the Bible for
Frances Lincoln. Those were all brilliantly illustrated by Jackie
Morris and we are about
to start on a new Bible stories series at Frances Lincoln with Kings and Queens of the Bible,
to be illustrated by Emma Shaw-Smith.
Emma also illustrated my Brother and Sister Tales for
Barefoot Books and was a neighbour of mine all the time in Crouch
End, though neither of us knew it then.
I did two more collections for Dorling Kindersley – A
First Myths Storybook and A First Fairy Tales Storybook.
And a huge collection of traditional tales for Macmillan called
A Treasury of Nursery Stories. That was enormous fun to
do and beautifully illustrated by Anna Currey, whose pigs and
ducks and mice are a joy.
A Twist in the Tail was all animal stories, superbly illustrated
by Jan Ormerod, who had not been known for her animal pictures
before that. But these are really special.
I had been friends with artist Jane Ray for a long time before
we managed to work together. We were having lunch one day and
said, since I wrote and she illustrated children’s books,
we should really have a go. The first result was Song of the
Earth, a collection of myths, beliefs and superstitions about
the four elements – Earth, Fire, Water, Air. That was followed
three years later by Sun, Moon and Stars, a similar gathering
together of all things heavenly, sprinkled with Jane’s signature
silver and gold.
Both of these were gorgeous books and it’s the only time
I’ve ever worked closely with an artist. (It was Jane, incidentally,
who donated a perfect colour cover for Lines in the Sand).
Women of Camelot was a collection I was longing to do.
It tells the stories of the court of King Arthur – from
the women’s point of view. Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, the
Lady of the Lake and others all get a chance to tell their stories
in their own voices. And these are accompanied by wonderfully
stylised and stylish pictures by Christina Balit.
Bump in the Night was a great opportunity to create eight
mini-novels, each with a different hero or heroine and a ghost.
Most of the ghosts are of things – a house, a car, a whole
village, a haunted keyboard – though there is also the housemaid
in Reviving Ivy and the vixen in Foxy Lady. I am
specially fond of this collection and would love to see it back
in print.
Titles
|
Kings
and Queens of the Bible 
