There is nothing much more exciting than opening a big box and finding shiny, new copies of your own writing: picking up and feeling the weight of your own book for the first time.

But this one isn’t my own book!  At least, it isn’t all my own.  The plot, the characters and lots of the writing come from my brilliant Snail Tales colleague Chip, who created a storytelling stage show and asked me to help him write the ‘book of the show’.  Some of the characterisation came from the stars of that show, which I went to see in Cambridge: L-J Richardson as Knut and Olivia Balzano as Ethelred.  Many of the stories within the book and the show come, not from Chip, but from children who have taken part in Snail Tales workshops.  And the illustrations, of course, come from Dave Hingley.  I didn’t know he was going to draw a cartoon version of me…

So, this is not just my celebration.  It’s been lots of fun to work as part of a team and part of a wider project again.  It’s also been a real challenge to find a way to make an interactive storytelling show into a readable book without losing its essence.  Plenty of extra material went in, but best of all are the blank pages, waiting to be filled out by young storytellers.  This is a book which will not be complete until YOU have read it!

To preorder from Amazon, click here and please leave a review once you’ve enjoyed the book!