Cerrie Burnell turns to middle grade fiction

Oxford University Press (OUP) Children’s has bought two middle-grade titles by author Cerrie Burnell.

The first book, The Girl with the Shark’s Teeth, is a magical adventure story about a girl called Minnow, who has grown up on a boat with her mother Mercy hearing tales of a place below the ocean called The Wild Deep. When Mercy is taken away, Minnow realises The Wild Deep is real.

Burnell, who created the story when her daughter asked if there were mermaids who looked like her, said: “Mercy is part pirate, part mystery and could steal your heart with her laugh. And Minnow is our bright hearted, brown-skinned heroine struggling to find her place in the world, who soon discovers her differences are the very thing that make her powerful.”

Clare Whitston, senior commissioning editor at OUP Children’s, acquired world rights to two titles from Claire Wilson at Rogers, Coleridge and White, and will publish The Girl with the Shark’s Teeth in January 2019, followed by the second book in 2020.