My new picture book What Rosa Brought is now out in the world. I’m prouder of this book than any other one I’ve written.

Some years ago, there came a time when I felt my kids were ready to begin learning about the Holocaust, but not ready to face the full horror of it. As it happened, we had the perfect story in the family. My mom was a little girl in Vienna when the Nazis marched in. She was present for the first steps the they took against the Austrian Jews. But miraculously, she and her parents escaped in 1939. One of her most vivid memories of that time is from the day she left Vienna, when she discovered that her beloved grandmother had to stay behind. So it’s certainly not a happy story. But it is, at least, a story whose sadness a child can wrap their head around, as a very first step towards a painful but necessary understanding of the kind of horrors we must always be on guard against.

I’m very proud to announce that my picturebook What Rosa Brought will be coming out in 2023 from Harpercollins/Tegen, with art by Eliza Wheeler. It’s the true story of my mother’s experience as a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Vienna.  I’m looking forward to sharing it with the world.

Coming in October, and available for pre-order now! I encourage you to support your local independent bookstore but it’s also available from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

When I was in college, I was lucky enough to study writing with Toni Morrison. Recently, some of her other former students and colleagues and I wrote about our memories of learning from her.

I’m excited to announce I’ll be on a panel at this year’s Hay Festival, chaired by Emily Drabble. Come by to hear me, Emma Carroll and Kiran Millwood Hargrave discuss how we built our imaginary worlds.

I had another great afternoon at St. James COE Primary School last week. We talked about a crucial element of stories: goals and obstacles.

A cool thing about stories is that big, cosmic goals can often hinge on small actions. “A few friends have to destroy some jewelry” doesn’t sound like the plot of an epic — but if that jewelry happens to be Sauron’s One Ring, you’ve got the plot of Lord of the Rings.

This term, I’m Patron of Reading for St. James Church of England Primary School. So far, I’ve done two workshops with the kids, and I’ve been having a blast.

Yesterday’s workshop was on characters. The kids came up with a bunch of Inside Traits (kindness, bravery) and Outside Traits (wearing a blue dress, having two tails.) Then we combined them and made up stories about the resulting characters.

Hyacinth And The Stone Thief — the second book in the Hyacinth series — comes out on May 15, 2018. But you don’t have to wait until then to see the amazing cover, by artist Petur Antonsson. You can pre-order Hyacinth & The Stone Thief here.

Thank you to The Irish Times, which called me a “vivid and original voice”, and to The Guardian, which called The City of Secret Rivers “a harum-scarum ride through London’s sewer-land” and an “excellent thriller.”

Some of the locations in Hyacinth & The Secrets Beneath (AKA The City of Secret Rivers) are inaccessible, like the sewers of London. And some are fictional, like the secret underground postoffice staffed by mud monsters. But a lot of them are real-life places that you can visit. To help you find them, I’ve made a map of the real-life locations that inspired the book. Have fun visiting them!