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Children’s author Shirley Hughes has been signed up for a new series by Random House Children’s Publishers, working for the first time in collaboration with her daughter author-illustrator Clara Vulliamy, while OUP Children’s Books also signed up a début author mother-and-daughter team.
Hughes is perhaps best known for her Alfie series, while Vuillamy’s books include The Bear with Sticky Paws. RHCP publisher for colour and licensing, Fiona Macmillan, bought world rights in Hughes and Vulliamy’s new adventure series, Dixie O’Day, from Hilary Delamare of The Agency.
The series will launch in September 2013 with Dixie in the Fast Lane, featuring friends Dixie O’Day and Percy. Macmillan said: “Reading Dixie O’Day’s hilarious adventures and seeing Clara’s bold illustrations alongside them immediately shows what a unique dynamic this mother-daughter pairing has.”
“Sitting at the kitchen table and working on these stories together, sharing ideas and reading bits aloud, are some of the happiest I’ve known,” Vulliamy said.
Meanwhile, OUP Children’s Books has bought three novels for girls aged seven-plus by début author Wendy Meddour, and illustrated by her 11-year-old daughter Mina May, who created the pictures using the Brushes programme on an iPad.
Senior commissioning editor Jasmine Richards bought world rights from Penny Holroyde at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency.
Richards said the books would play into the illustrated and comic books trend, and the first book, Wendy Quill is a Crocodile’s Bottom, is a standalone story in the series about school, friendships and family life, narrated by nine-year-old Wendy Quill.