Disney designer’s Wolfboy goes global

Bloomsbury Children’s is to publish a picture book by Disney art director Andy Harkness on both sides of the Atlantic in winter 2021, after acquiring the manuscript ahead of this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

The publisher bought world rights (excluding Dutch) to Wolfboy, which is about a wolf who is “hangry”, in a two-book deal. Mary Kate Castellani, executive editor at Bloomsbury Children’s in the US, sealed a pre-empt with Adah Nuchi and Rena Rossner at the Deborah Harris Agency, and the publisher said it has already experienced “high” foreign-rights interest.

Harkness, who art-directed the Disney film “Moana”, said: “Wolfboy has been stomping around in my head for almost a decade. It wasn’t until I became a father and witnessed, first-hand, what happened when dinner was running a little late, that the story truly began to materialise. I am absolutely thrilled to be working with Bloomsbury to make this book a reality.”