Thames & Hudson scoops Campbell's first children's book

Thames & Hudson will publish author, poet and vlogger Jen Campbell’s first children’s title, a “bookshop-themed picture book”, about a friendship between a young bibliophile and a dragon.

Campbell has around 33,000 followers on her YouTube channel and revealed that she wrote the “majority” of Franklin’s Flying Bookshop in a bookstore in Sussex.

It features a dragon and a book-loving girl who “celebrate each other’s differences through a universal love of stories”. The title will be illustrated by Katie Harnett and will be published on 7th September.

Campbell said: “I wrote the majority of Franklin's Flying Bookshop in a bookshop – Much Ado in Sussex. It's about a dragon and a young girl and the power of books. Franklin represents so many misinformed fears that people have in today's world. It's about connecting, sharing, and the stories that pull us together.” 

Campbell’s adult title The Bookshop Book (Constable) was the official book for ‘Books Are My Bag’ (BAMB) campaign in 2014 and as part of the celebrations she wrote 100 poems in 48 hours to fundraise for the Book Bus, a charity that serves communities in Africa, Asia and South America with mobile libraries.

Thames & Hudson is also working with BAMB to promote Campbell's Franklin’s Flying Bookshop around National Bookshop Day on 7th October. The publisher will launch an immersive #FindFranklin competition campaign shortly.

She helped judge the 2016 Costa awards