Gaiman and Riddell cook up Pirate Stew for Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury is to publish Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell's latest picture book, Pirate Stew. 

Rebecca McNally, publishing director for Bloomsbury Children’s Books, acquired UK and commonwealth rights from Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House for the text, and world rights from Philippa Milnes-Smith at The Soho Agency for the illustrations. Rosemary Brosnan acquired North American and Canadian rights for the text on behalf of HarperCollins US.

Illustrated by Riddell, the book is a "piratical adventure" and features rhyming text.

 Gaiman has sold a total of 3.28 million books for £27.3m since 1998, through Nielsen BookScan's UK TCM.

He said: “Pirate Stew began in early 2009, when I scribbled a handful of lines of a poem about the sorts of ingredients that would go into a Pirate Stew down on a scrap of paper. I kept the scrap of paper in my wallet as the years went by, and would look at it and feel guilty. And then my son was two, and I thought, I should write a book I can read to him when he's older, and I remembered the scrap of paper, and knew that it was time to tell that story."

The book will be released in hardback on 1st October.