Bloomsbury Children's sinks its Claus into Pounder's festive novel

Bloomsbury Children’s has snapped up Sibéal Pounder's “Wicked-style retelling of every Santa story you've ever read”, which centres around Ms Claus. The festive-themed novel is aimed at the 9-12 range, the first time Pounder has written for that age group for Bloomsbury.

Bloomsbury Children’s head of fiction Ellen Holgate bought world rights (excluding North America) in Tinsel: The Untold Story of Ms Claus from Gemma Cooper at The Bent Agency. The book, to be published in the UK in October 2020, aims to “bring Blanche Claus out of the background” and will introduce new characters to the Christmas story, including Eggnog, “a giant enchanted fir tree who just wants to hug everyone”.

Cooper said: "Sibéal’s gloriously gloriously quirky casts of characters and sumptuous world building combined with everything over the top about the festival period is the perfect combination for a Christmas origin story.”

Pounder has sold almost 250,000 units for £860,000 through BookScan UK across her Witch Wars and Bad Mermaids series. The last 12 months have been a breakout: she had a World Book Day title in Bad Mermaids Meet the Witches and on 3rd October Macmillan Children’s released her Beyond Platform 13, an official sequel to Eva Ibbotson’s classic, The Secret of Platform 13. Bad Mermaids was optioned for film by Sony Pictures Animation late last year.

Holgate said Pounder was bringing her "renowned wit and style of her hugely successful young fiction series to a brand new audience" and that it was a "moving and big-hearted family story that will be around for many Christmases to come".